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5-2017
Links Between Maternal Emotion Socialization and Adolescents' Social Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Peer Emotion Socialization
Natalee N. Price College of William and Mary
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Recommended Citation Price, Natalee N., "Links Between Maternal Emotion Socialization and Adolescents' Social Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Peer Emotion Socialization" (2017). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 1020. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1020
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Abstract
Parents remain influential emotion socialization (ES) agents for their adolescents, with parents’ supportive and unsupportive ES associated with youths’ adaptive and maladaptive social outcomes, respectively (Buckholdt, Kitzmann, & Cohen, 2014). However, less research has examined how adolescents’ ES behaviors towards their close friends may mediate these links.
Thus, the current study examines whether maternal ES relates to adolescents’ social outcomes
(e.g., overt and relational victimization, bullying, friendship quality, receipt of prosocial behavior) through adolescents’ ES behaviors towards their friends. Participants were 158 middle- school age youth (Mage = 12.67 years; 59.5% girls; 78.5% Caucasian; from mostly upper-middle class families) who participated with their mothers and a same-sex close friend. Maternal ES was measured via mother-report, peer ES was assessed through friend-report of expected ES responses from their friend (the parent’s child), and adolescents’ social experiences was measured through adolescent self-report. Ten mediation models were computed using the
Process macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). There were significant indirect links between supportive maternal ES and adolescent overt victimization, bullying behaviors, positive friendship quality, and receipt of peers’ prosocial behaviors, such that greater maternal supportive ES behaviors were separately associated with more adaptive social outcomes, through adolescents’ own supportive ES responses. Greater maternal supportive ES behaviors were directly associated with greater friendship quality and fewer bullying behaviors. No significant indirect effects emerged for the potential link between unsupportive maternal ES and adolescents’ social outcomes, through adolescents’ own unsupportive ES behaviors. However, greater maternal unsupportive
ES behaviors were related to fewer overt victimization experiences for youths. There were no significant direct or indirect links between supportive or unsupportive ES practices and relational
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victimization. These results suggest that maternal ES (particularly supportive ES) is associated with adolescents’ own ES, which in turn contributes to youths’ positive social outcomes.
Implications and future directions are discussed.
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Table of Contents
Abstract i Acknowledgements iv List of Tables and Figures v
Introduction 1 Parent Emotion Socialization 2 o Modes and outcomes of parent emotion socialization 2 Peer Emotion Socialization 5 o Peer friendships in adolescence 5 o Modes and outcomes of peer emotion socialization 6 Adolescent Social Experiences 9 o Peer victimization and bullying 9 o Parent- and emotion-related precursors to victimization and bullying 12 o Friendship quality and prosocial behavior 13 o Parent- and emotion-related precursors to friendship quality and experiences of prosocial behavior 17 The Current Study 18 o Hypotheses 20
Method 21 Participants 21 Measures 21 o Maternal emotion socialization 22 o Peer emotion socialization 23 o Adolescent social functioning 24 Procedure 26 Analytic Plan 27
Results 29 Hypotheses Set 1: Supportive Responses 29 Hypotheses Set 2: Unsupportive Responses 32
Discussion 34 Supportive Emotion Socialization Findings 35 Unsupportive Emotion Socialization Findings 38 Limitations and Future Directions 40 Conclusion 44
References 46
Appendix 88
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Janice Zeman, who has been incalculably pivotal in my growth as a student, researcher, critical thinker, and person. Dr.
Zeman, I truly cannot thank you enough for generously welcoming me into your lab over four years ago and for providing invaluable mentorship every moment since. I also wish to extend special thanks to my honors committee members, Dr. Inga Carboni and Dr. Elizabeth Raposa, for their careful reading and insightful critiques of my manuscript. I am additionally indebted to all of the incredible individuals who have been a part of our Social and Emotional Development Lab team over the past few years for their countless hours of mentorship, support, and assistance. I would also like to convey my appreciation to the William & Mary Charles Center and
Department of Psychology for financially supporting this project. Lastly, I would like to thank my family, partner, and friends for their unabating generosity and unconditional support throughout the making of this thesis.
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List of Tables
1. Factor Analytic Structure of Scale Assessing Maternal Emotion Socialization 70
2. Factor Analytic Structure of Scale Assessing Peer Emotion Socialization 72
3. Means, Standard Deviations, and Psychometric Properties of Major Study Variables 75
4. Summary of Intercorrelations Between Major Study Variables 76
5. Indirect Effect of Supportive Maternal Emotion Socialization on Adolescents’ Social Outcomes, through Supportive Peer Emotion Socialization 77
6. Direct Effect of Supportive Maternal Emotion Socialization on Adolescents’ Social Outcomes 78
7. Indirect Effect of Unsupportive Maternal Emotion Socialization on Adolescents’ Social Outcomes, through Unsupportive Peer Emotion Socialization 79
8. Direct Effect of Unsupportive Maternal Emotion Socialization on Adolescents’ Social Outcomes 80
List of Figures
1. Conceptual diagram of the mediation models tested 81
2. Statistical diagram of the mediation models tested 82
3. Indirect effect of supportive maternal ES on adolescent overt victimization through adolescents’ supportive ES 83
4. Indirect and direct effect of supportive maternal ES on adolescent bullying 84
5. Indirect and direct effect of supportive maternal ES on adolescent positive friendship quality 85
6. Indirect effect of supportive maternal ES on adolescent receipt of prosocial behavior through adolescents’ supportive ES 86
7. Direct effect of unsupportive maternal ES on adolescent overt victimization 87
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Running head: EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 1
Emotion Socialization and Adolescents’ Social Experiences
During adolescence, youth experience many positive gains in their emotional development, including improvements to the understanding of their own and others’ emotions and emotional expressivity. These advances then integrally influence the nature of adolescents’ interpersonal relationships, given that social and emotional development processes are deeply intertwined (Cassano, Perry-Parrish, & Zeman, 2007; Denham, 2007; Fischer & van Kleef, 2010;
Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington, 2006). In particular, socialization of youths’ emotions by caregivers and peers provides a venue through which youth may better hone their skills to display, understand, and regulate their emotions (Denham, Bassett, & Wyatt, 2007). Emotion socialization refers to the process by which socialization agents (e.g., parents, peers) impart their values, beliefs, and practices regarding the acceptability of emotional expressivity in particular contexts to others (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Zeman, Cassano, & Adrian, 2013).
Over the past decade, the emotion socialization literature has primarily emphasized parents’, especially mothers’, roles as socializing agents, due to their early presence in their children’s lives and their continued influence from childhood through adolescence (Klimes-
Dougan & Zeman, 2007; Laursen & Collins, 2009; Zeman et al., 2013). However, individuals with other social roles are also expected to socialize adolescents’ emotions, both concurrently with and beyond parental influence. Within the past several years, researchers have begun to examine the ways in which adolescent peers may socialize their friends’ emotions and how these practices may lead to later socioemotional outcomes for each friend (Klimes-Dougan et al.,
2014). The current research adds to the extant literature by examining the potential bridges between parent, primarily mother, and peer emotion socialization. This study examines specific ways in which adolescents’ socialization of their close friends’ emotions may help explain the
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 2 relation between maternal emotion socialization practices and adolescents’ social outcomes (i.e., relational and overt victimization, bullying behaviors, friendship quality, receipt of prosocial behaviors). This introductory section aims to orient the reader to the present study by examining modes of parent and peer emotion socialization that are directly relevant to this study, before delving into pertinent facets of adolescents’ social experiences.
Parent Emotion Socialization
Modes and outcomes of parent emotion socialization. Researchers have conceptualized parents as emotional role models for their youth who provide the foundation for their children’s emotional development (Zeman et al., 2013). As primary figures of support, they aid the development of their children’s emotion regulation (Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, &
Robinson, 2007; von Salisch, 2001). In the past few decades, researchers have identified several indirect and direct modes by which parents socialize their children’s and adolescent’s emotions.
That is, parents may indirectly impart their beliefs about emotion to their youth through their sustained pattern of exhibiting verbal and nonverbal emotion-related expressions (Bariola,
Gullone, & Hughes, 2011; Halberstadt, Cassidy, Stifter, Parke, & Fox, 1995). This mode of emotion socialization is indexed by both (a) parents’ specific expressions of emotions towards individual family members (e.g., modelling; Bariola et al., 2011), and (b) parents’ general style of emotion expressions in the family context (e.g., family emotional climate; Halberstadt, Crisp,
& Eaton, 1999; Morris et al., 2007). Parents may also directly serve as socializing agents through their discussions of emotions with their child (Cassano et al., 2007; Gottman, Katz, & Hooven,
1997; Katz, Maliken, & Stettler, 2012) and through their overt responses to their children’s emotions (Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016; O’Neal & Magai, 2005; Sanders, Zeman, Poon, &
Miller, 2015). The current study focuses on the latter emotion socialization strategy, in which
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 3 parents socialize their children’s emotions via responding to their emotional displays in supportive or unsupportive ways.
Emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) broadly encompass the range of verbal and nonverbal responses that parents may directly provide to their children’s emotional displays
(Eisenberg et al., 1998). The responses may be supportive or unsupportive in nature, and are generally linked to later adaptive and maladaptive adolescent outcomes, respectively (Klimes-
Dougan et al., 2007; Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016; Sanders et al., 2015). However, it is important to note that although supportive and unsupportive emotion socialization responses are theorized to be independent constructs, parents may respond in both ways to their child, even within the same setting and discussion (Lunkenheimer, Shields, & Cortina, 2007). O’Neal and
Magai (2005) have categorized parental ERSBs as reflecting rewarding, overriding, punishing, neglecting, or magnifying responses to youths’ emotional displays.
Supportive ERSBs may involve parents rewarding their adolescents for their emotional expressivity, such that parents may offer comfort to and empathize with their youth (O’Neal &
Magai, 2005). Parents may further provide supportive responses to their adolescent through their willingness to discuss and facilitate problem-solving strategies for emotional situations (Klimes-
Dougan et al., 2007; O’Neal & Magai, 2005). Through overriding behaviors, parents attempt to alleviate their adolescents’ emotional distress by distracting them from their emotional displays or dismissing their emotion expressions (e.g., telling the adolescent to cheer up, buying the adolescent a gift; Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016; O’Neal & Magai, 2005). Researchers have proposed that overriding responses may be especially adaptive in adolescence, since youth exhibit heightened levels of emotional reactivity during this developmental period (Miller-
Slough & Dunsmore, 2016).
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 4
Recent research has also demonstrated that parents’ supportive responses to youths’ emotions are more common than unsupportive responses (Jobe-Shields, Buckholdt, Parra, &
Tillery, 2014) and may facilitate gains in youth’s emotional and social competence (McElwain,
Halberstadt, & Volling, 2007; Spinrad, Stifter, Donelan-McCall, & Turner, 2004). Through supportive ERSBs, youth learn adaptive ways to understand, regulate, and cope with emotions
(Eisenberg et al., 1998; McElwain et al., 2007; Thompson & Meyer, 2007). For instance, one study found that maternal overriding responses may be particularly adaptive for youth who tend to seek out less support from their mothers (Miller-Slough Zeman, Poon, & Sanders, 2016).
Further, supportive parental behaviors have been associated with a variety of adolescent social functioning outcomes, including greater peer respect, greater sociability, and less loneliness
(Buckholdt, Kitzmann, & Cohen, 2014; Eisenberg et al., 1998), as well as adolescents’ positive treatment outcomes and lower rates of psychopathology (i.e., externalizing, internalizing;
Buckholdt, Parra, & Jobe-Shields, 2014; Denham et al., 2000; Dunsmore, Booker, Ollendick, &
Greene, 2016; Thompson & Meyer, 2007).
In contrast, unsupportive ERSBs may involve parental responses of punishing, neglecting, or magnifying their youths’ emotional displays (O’Neal & Magai, 2005). Parents may punish their adolescents’ expressions of emotion by showing disapproval towards or mocking their adolescents’ emotional displays (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007). Additionally, parents may neglect their youths’ emotions by either ignoring or not noticing their expressions of emotions
(Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007). Finally, magnification of emotions may occur when parents respond to their adolescents’ emotional displays by matching such expressions (e.g., a parent crying at a youth’s sadness expression; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007).
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 5
Unsupportive ERSBs tend to foster a variety of maladaptive outcomes (Eisenberg et al.,
1998; O’Neal & Magai, 2005; Shipman et al., 2007). They have been implicated in prolonging and intensifying youths’ emotional states (Fabes, Leonard, Kupanoff, & Martin, 2001), hindering their emotion-related coping strategies (Sanders et al., 2015; Thompson & Meyer, 2007), contributing to their dysregulated affect (Brand & Klimes-Dougan, 2010; Buckholdt, Parra, et al., 2014), and exacerbating their global psychological distress (Garside & Klimes-Dougan,
2002). Further, unsupportive ERSBs, particularly those that involve the neglect or overt punishment of adolescents’ emotional displays, have been shown to contribute to adolescents’ externalizing (Brand & Klimes-Dougan, 2010; O’Neal & Magai, 2005) and internalizing symptoms (Sanders et al., 2015; Schwartz, Sheeber, Dudgeon, & Allen, 2012; Yap, Allen, &
Ladouceur, 2008) and emotion dysregulation (Miller-Slough et al., 2016; Shipman et al., 2007;
Williams & Woodruff-Borden, 2015).
Peer Emotion Socialization
Peer friendships in adolescence. Recent research suggests that peer friendships may provide another social context through which youths’ emotions are socialized (Brechwald &
Prinstein, 2011; Denham, 2007; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2014). In adolescence, friendships become influential and salient contexts for youths’ emotional development (Collins & Laursen,
2004; Denham et al., 2007; Laursen & Collins, 2009; Rubin, Bukowski, & Laursen, 2009).
During this time, adolescents increasingly turn to their friends for emotional support and friendships tend to become more dyadic and intimate (Berndt & McCandless, 2009; Dodge,
Coie, & Lynam, 2006; Nickerson & Nagle, 2005).
Friendships differ from parent-child relationships in significant ways that may produce unique patterns of emotion socialization among adolescent friends. In contrast to parent-child
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 6 relationships, peer friendships tend to be egalitarian in their distribution of social power, such that adolescents are unlikely to feel responsible for regulating the behaviors of their friends
(Adams & Laursen, 2001; Rubin, Oh, Menzer, & Ellison, 2011). Furthermore, these symmetrical social power dynamics may foster an environment in which adolescents feel more comfortable discussing and expressing their emotions freely (Bukowski, Brendgen, & Vitaro, 2007; von
Salisch, 2001). Peer relationships are also often characterized by shared social experiences that likely involve similar developmental roles, transitions, and/or life events (Bukowski et al., 2007;
Denham, 2007; Denham et al., 2007). As such, friendships provide a venue through which adolescents may self-disclose their emotional experiences to their friends (von Salisch, 2001;
Zeman & Shipman, 1997). The context of these emotional disclosures may in turn offer opportunities for youth to learn to manage emotions within a close friendship and respond supportively to their friends’ emotional displays (Denham, 2007; von Salisch, 2001). Finally, peer relationships are voluntary but less stable over time than parent-child relationships (Hartup
& Abecassis, 2002). Consequently, adolescents may be motivated to maintain and strengthen their friendships by protecting their friends’ feelings, limiting threats of betrayal, and self- disclosing emotional experiences (Adams & Laursen, 2001; von Salisch, 2001; Zeman &
Shipman, 1997). In this way, characteristics of adolescent friendships foster environments conducive to the socialization of emotion.
Modes and outcomes of peer emotion socialization. During this developmental period, adolescents hone their foundational emotion skills through their continued exposure to emotion socialization practices by their parents and other socializing agents (Morris et al., 2007). As such, they, too, have been postulated to indirectly and directly socialize their friends’ emotions
(Denham, 2007; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2014; Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016). Such peer
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 7 behaviors have largely been conceptualized as encompassing the same rewarding, overriding, punishing, neglecting, and magnifying range of responses as those employed by parents (O’Neal
& Magai, 2005). As with their parents, adolescents report more commonly receiving supportive
(e.g., rewarding, overriding), rather than unsupportive, responses to their emotional displays from their friends (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2014). Moreover, children and adolescents may actually expect and perceive their friends as providing fewer unsupportive reactions to their negative emotions than their parents (Shipman, Zeman, Nesin, & Fitzgerald, 2003; Zeman &
Shipman, 1997). This difference in perception may be the result of several factors. For one, parents’ unsupportive responses may be more salient to adolescents because of the asymmetric nature of the power structure in the parent-child relationship that may allow for more parent- driven concrete consequences (e.g., grounding) for emotional displays (Miller-Slough &
Dunsmore, 2016). Youth may also perhaps provide more supportive responses to their friends’ emotion expressions because of the egalitarian, potentially transient nature of adolescent friendships (von Salisch, 2001). In tandem, friends’ supportive responses to emotional disclosures may also function to maintain and fortify close friendships (von Salisch, 2001).
Although there is still a relative dearth of studies assessing how these supportive and unsupportive peer responses may relate to adolescent adjustment, extant research has generated findings similar to those of the parent emotion socialization literature (e.g., Klimes-Dougan et al., 2014).
Supportive and unsupportive friend responses have been postulated to facilitate and impede gains in adaptive emotion regulation strategies, respectively (Miller-Slough &
Dunsmore, 2016). Further, such reactions are thought to differentially contribute to adolescent adjustment outcomes, though few studies to date have tested these prospective links.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 8
Preliminary work offers equivocal findings regarding how adolescents’ emotion-related responses may relate to their friends’ internalizing and externalizing symptomatology (Klimes-
Dougan et al., 2014; Lougheed et al., 2016; Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016). In one study, adolescents reported providing fewer supportive responses to their friends who had greater levels of depressive symptomatology (Lougheed et al., 2016), perhaps because the friends may have been similar in their depressive symptom levels or because adolescents’ negative affect may be unpleasant to their friends (Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016). Other findings, however, suggest that there may be little to no relation between peers’ responses and adolescents’ internalizing symptoms, particularly for youth in clinical samples (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2014). There has been some evidence for an association between adolescents’ responses to their friends’ emotions and their friends’ externalizing symptomatology. Klimes-Dougan and colleagues (2014) found that adolescents’ unsupportive emotion-related responses were linked to their friends’ heightened levels of externalizing symptoms. These effects may in part reflect how adolescents’ unsupportive responses may produce greater negative affect in their friend, thereby resulting in externalization of their emotions (Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016). Few, if any, studies have assessed the influence of adolescent emotion socializing behaviors on youths’ (socializer or recipient) social outcomes.
In sum, both parents and peers influence the emotional development of adolescents, particularly through their socialization of emotions. Through their responses to youths’ emotions, parents and peers teach adolescents about the norms and acceptability of emotional displays, and these socializing practices are associated with a variety of adaptive or maladaptive outcomes (for reviews, see Eisenberg et al., 1998, Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007; Klimes-Dougan & Zeman,
2007; Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016; Zeman et al., 2013). However, little research has
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 9 examined the prospective linkage between parent and peer socialization of emotion to determine whether the ways in which parents socialize their child’s emotions may be associated with adolescents’ emotion socialization behaviors within close peer friendships. The current study aims to examine this linkage with respect to several social outcomes.
Adolescent Social Experiences
There remains a relative dearth of literature assessing how parents’ responses to their child’s emotional displays may contribute to their child’s social competencies and experiences, both directly and indirectly through adolescents’ emotion socializing behaviors (Miller-Slough &
Dunsmore, 2016). As such, the overarching goal of this research is to examine whether maternal and peer emotion socialization practices may be prospectively linked to adolescents’ social experiences. Five adolescent social experiences were identified for the present research, including adolescents’ experiences of overt and relational peer victimization, bullying behaviors, positive friendship quality, and experiences of prosocial behaviors from peers.
Peer victimization and bullying. Peer victimization refers to adolescents’ social experiences in which they are the target of other youths’ aggressive behaviors (e.g., bullying;
Crick & Grotpeter, 1996; Hawker & Boulton, 2000). Most of the peer victimization literature has derived from and built upon the seminal works of Crick and colleagues (e.g., Crick & Grotpeter,
1995, 1996; Crick et al., 1999), who have conceptualized peer victimization as encompassing several distinct, but interrelated, forms of peer aggression. Two such venues of victimization, namely, overt and relational aggression, are relevant to the current study. Overt, or physical, peer victimization denotes instances when an adolescent is physically targeted, threatened, or attacked by his or her peers (Crick et al., 1999; Hawker & Boulton, 2000). These physical attacks and threats may include (but are not limited to) the aggressor hitting, pushing, yelling at, or
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 10 stealing the belongings of the adolescent (Crick et al., 1999; Storch, Brassard, & Masia-Warner,
2003). Relational peer victimization, on the other hand, refers to the ways in which an adolescent may be harmed by his or her peers intentionally manipulating, damaging, or threatening to sabotage the adolescent’s interpersonal relationships (e.g., friendships; Archer & Coyne, 2005;
Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Crick et al., 1999). For instance, peers may spread rumors about an adolescent, exclude him or her from their social interactions, or tell the adolescent that they will not like the adolescent unless he or she complies with their requests (Crick & Grotpeter, 1996;
Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Storch, Brassard, et al., 2003). Researchers have demonstrated that these two venues of peer victimization are (a) conceptually and qualitatively different from one another (Archer & Coyne, 2005; Card, Stucky, Sawalani, & Little, 2008; Crick & Grotpeter,
1995) and (b) highly stable over time, particularly when assessed during adolescence (Card,
2003; Ostrov & Keating, 2004). Interestingly, such forms of victimization appear to occur in a range of peer interactions, from peer group contexts (Bukowski & Sippola, 2001) to close, dyadic friendships (Crick & Nelson, 2002; Grotpeter & Crick, 1996), and can occur either transiently (Browning, Cohen, & Warman, 2003) or chronically (Beran, 2008; Juvonen, Nishina,
& Graham, 2000).
Adolescent exposure to these overtly and relationally aggressive acts has been associated with an array of maladaptive adjustment difficulties (for reviews, see Archer & Coyne, 2005;
Card, 2003; Card, Isaacs, & Hodges, 2007; Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Schäfer, Werner, & Crick,
2002). Peer-victimized youth are at risk for concurrent and longitudinal increases in anxiety, depression/dysphoria, and loneliness (Kelsey, Zeman, & Dallaire, 2016; Storch, Masia-Warner,
Crisp, & Klein, 2005; Storch, Nock, Masia-Warner, & Barlas, 2003) as well as externalizing symptomatology (Card, 2003; Card et al., 2007; Prinstein, Boergers, & Vernberg, 2001). Peer
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 11 victimization has also been associated with several indices of social difficulties, including having fewer and poorer quality friendships (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2011; Nansel et al., 2001), impaired social skills (Card, 2003), heightened levels of peer rejection (Crick & Grotpeter, 1996; Waldrip,
Malcolm, & Jensen-Campbell, 2008), and decreased prosocial behavior (Denham, 2007).
Moreover, youth who are victimized by their peers are also vulnerable to the development of risky and impulsive behaviors (Archer & Coyne, 2005) and negative self-perceptions (Juvonen et al., 2000; Storch, Masia-Warner, et al., 2005), as well as decreased rates of life satisfaction and positive affect (Martin & Huebner, 2007).
Relatedly, researchers have conceptualized bullying as a subtype of aggressive behavior that denotes instances in which an adolescent (or group of adolescents) systematically directs aggression towards a subset of his or her peers (Olweus, 1993; Rigby, 2002; Shields & Cicchetti,
2001). The construct carries much theoretical overlap with overt and relational aggressive behaviors, similarly encompassing intentions or acts of physical harm, social exclusion, or teasing (Espelage, Bosworth, & Simon, 2000; Nansel et al., 2001). Bullying behaviors are generally exhibited toward youths who are psychologically or physically weaker than the aggressor (Olweus, 1993; Rigby, 2002; Schäfer et al., 2002) and are often, though not always, chronic in nature (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006; Rigby, 2002; Schwartz, Dodge, Pettit, &
Bates, 1997).
Over the past several decades, researchers have devoted considerable attention to assessing the social-psychological adjustment difficulties associated with being a perpetrator of peer aggression (e.g., engaging in bullying behaviors; Crick, Ostrov, & Kawabata, 2007; Crick,
Ostrov, & Werner, 2006; Ladd, 2005; Ladd & Troop-Gordon, 2003; Nansel et al., 2001). Youths who engage in bullying behaviors have reported heightened levels of internalizing (Ellis, Crooks,
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 12
& Wolfe, 2009; Kelsey et al., 2016; Murray-Close, Ostrov, & Crick, 2007) and externalizing symptomatology (Card et al., 2008; Crick & Nelson, 2002; Prinstein et al., 2001), negative self- perceptions (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995), and an array of other social-psychological adjustment problems (Crick, Ostrov, Appleyard, Jansen, & Casas, 2004; Crick, Murray-Close, & Woods,
2005). Aggressive youth are also susceptible to poor peer relations (e.g., peer rejection, low friendship quality, low engagement in and receipt of prosocial behaviors (Card et al., 2008;
Cillessen, Jiang, West, & Laszkowski, 2005; Ostrov & Crick, 2007; Persson, 2005). Moreover, aggressive adolescents who are both coercive and prosocial tend to have friendships characterized by high levels of intimacy, conflict, and aggression (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2011;
Grotpeter & Crick, 1996; Hawley, Little, & Card, 2007).
Parent- and emotion-related precursors to victimization and bullying. There have been many efforts by researchers to elucidate prospective antecedents of adolescent victimization and bullying. One major area of focus has been parenting practices (Kawabata, Alink, Tseng,
Iizendoorn, & Crick, 2011; Nelson & Crick, 2002; Rubin et al., 2006). Positive, warm, and responsive parental attitudes and actions have been associated with adolescents’ lessened aggressive behaviors and heightened prosocial behaviors (Brown, Arnold, Dobbs, & Doctoroff,
2007; Crick et al., 1999; Laible, Carlo, Davis, & Karahuta, 2016). Correspondingly, recent research also suggests that parental negative affect, harsh parenting, and uninvolved parenting may be related to increases in youth aggression (Brown et al., 2007; Dodge et al., 2006; Espelage et al., 2000; Kawabata et al., 2011).
Researchers have suggested that youths’ aggressive and victimized behaviors may also partially result from their compromised emotion regulatory abilities (Dodge et al., 2006; Shields
& Cicchetti, 2001; Mahady Wilton, Craig, & Pepler, 2000). It seems very plausible that various
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 13 aspects of adolescents’ emotion processes, such as one’s understanding of others’ emotions or one’s disruptive and dysregulated emotion expressions, may engender aggressive or victimized outcomes (Arsenio, Cooperman, & Lover, 2000; Arsenio & Lemerise, 2001). Exploratory research has supported these links, with aggressive youths exhibiting negative baseline emotion dispositions, lower levels of emotion-related knowledge, and atypical emotional displays
(Arsenio et al., 2000; Garner, Dunsmore, & Southam-Gerrow, 2008; Shields & Cicchetti, 2001;
Mahady Wilton et al., 2000). Overtly and relationally victimized children and adolescents, in turn, also appear to lack certain emotion regulation skills (Miller et al., 2005; Morelen, Southam-
Gerow, & Zeman, 2016). For instance, victimized youths may have difficulties understanding others’ emotions (Miller et al., 2005), utilizing socially-appropriate emotional displays (Mahady
Wilton et al., 2000), and regulating sadness, worry, and anger (Morelen et al., 2016).
Several studies suggest that these deficits in emotion regulatory abilities may in part be due to a lack of parental emotional support and guidance (Crick et al., 1999; Kawabata et al.,
2011; Schwartz et al., 1997). Still, little research has examined parent emotion socialization practices, much less peer emotion socializing behaviors, as a potential precursor to adolescent aggression or victimization. Garner and colleagues (2008) offer one exception in which mothers’ positive emotionality during emotion discussions predicted lower rates of youths’ overt aggression. Furthermore, most of the parenting practices literature has focused on how parenting may serve to exacerbate adolescent aggression (e.g., Kawabata et al., 2011; Nelson & Crick,
2002), with fewer studies additionally examining how parents (and/or peers) may contribute to their children’s victimization by others (Card, 2003; Crick et al., 2004).
Friendship quality and prosocial behavior. In addition to victimization and bullying experiences, researchers have also been interested in how maternal and peer emotion
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 14 socialization practices may be related to two positive adolescent outcomes: namely, friendship quality and experiences of prosocial behavior. Not all adolescent friendships may be equally adaptive (Berndt, 2004; Denham et al., 2007; Parker & Asher, 1993). Friendships may vary in the quantity of time that adolescents spend together and in the amount of trust and support that typifies their friendship (Berndt & McCandless, 2009; Hartup & Abecassis, 2002).
Correspondingly, researchers have begun to distinguish between friendship dyads on indices of friendship quality. Adolescents’ high-quality friendships may be characterized by reciprocated affection and closeness, as well as heightened levels of mutual compassion, trust, and validation
(Berndt, 2004; Burk & Laursen, 2005; Rubin et al., 2006). Despite the somewhat transient nature of adolescent friendships (Hartup & Abecassis, 2002), these high-quality friendships tend to be relatively stable over time (Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996; Wojslawowicz Bowker,
Rubin, Burgess, Booth-LaForce, & Rose-Krasnor, 2006). Friendships lower in quality, on the other hand, are conceptualized as involving greater levels of conflict, hostility, rivalry, and betrayal (Berndt, 2004; Burk & Laursen, 2005).
In line with this framework, high-quality friendships and positive friendship qualities have been linked to a diversity of adaptive adolescent outcomes. Socially, adolescents in higher- quality friendships exhibit greater social competence (e.g., greater sociability, lower peer rejection; Pike & Atzaba-Poria, 2003; Rubin, Dwyer, Booth-LaForce, Kim, Burgess, & Rose-
Krasnor, 2004), academic success (Rubin et al., 2006; Wentzel, Barry, & Caldwell, 2004), and global self-worth (Berndt, 2004; Rubin et al., 2004). Members of these close friendships are also less vulnerable to internalizing problems (Nangle, Erdley, Newman, Mason, & Carpenter, 2003;
Rubin et al., 2004), loneliness (Nangle et al., 2003), and peer victimization (Hodges, Malone, &
Perry, 1997; Malcolm, Jensen-Campbell, Rex-Lear, & Waldrip, 2006). Furthermore, high-quality
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 15 friendships have been postulated to promote adaptive emotion regulation skills in social contexts by providing more opportunities for the development of effective coping strategies and by encouraging situationally-appropriate emotional expressivity (Farley & Kim-Spoon, 2014;
McDowell, O’Neil, & Parke, 2000). Lower-quality friendships, by contrast, generally predispose youth to maladaptive outcomes, such as social problems (e.g., increased antisocial behavior;
Sentse & Laird, 2010; Waldrip et al., 2008), internalizing and externalizing symptomatology
(Burk & Laursen, 2005; Sentse & Laird, 2010), and peer victimization (Bagwell & Schmidt,
2011; Bollmer, Milich, Harris, & Maras, 2005).
In the last several decades, many researchers have sought to examine how the quality of friendships may serve protective functions by ameliorating youths’ maladaptive adjustment trajectories. For adolescents with low peer acceptance, high-quality friendships buffered against peer victimization (Malcolm et al., 2006) and social adjustment problems (Waldrip et al., 2008).
High friendship quality also weakened associations from low maternal support (Rubin et al.,
2004), parental unilateral decision-making (Lansford, Criss, Pettit, Dodge, & Bates, 2003), and peer victimization (Prinstein et al., 2001) to higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptomatology. Positive friendship quality has additionally been found to diminish the positive association between externalizing problems and bullying behaviors (Bollmer et al., 2005).
Youths’ positive social experiences may also involve prosocial behavior, which broadly denotes voluntary behavior that individuals may provide to others in efforts to promote others’ well-being (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006; Hastings, Utendale, & Sullivan, 2007). These behaviors can be proactive or reactive in nature (Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2015) and include the various forms of emotional (e.g., comfort, empathy), relational (e.g., social inclusion), and tangible (e.g., physical help) support that adolescents may give or receive from their peers
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 16
(Bergin, Talley, & Hamer, 2003; Grusec, Davidov, & Lundell, 2002; Hastings et al., 2007). For instance, peers may voluntarily give compliments and encouragement, provide help with tasks and skill development, invite others to take part in their group activities, and/or share with other adolescents (Crick, 1996; Greener & Crick, 1999). There is some evidence to suggest that youths tend to exhibit an increased propensity towards engaging in these prosocial acts as they get older
(Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2015; Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2015), particularly towards their friends
(Padilla-Walker, Dyer, Yorgason, Fraser, & Coyne, 2015). Although engagement in these behaviors may be governed by a variety of motivations (e.g., altruism, public approval; Boxer,
Tisak, & Goldstein, 2004; Eisenberg, VanSchyndel, & Spinrad, 2016), the receipt of prosocial behaviors provides a useful index of youths’ daily social environments and relationships
(Greener & Crick, 1999; Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2015; Storch, Brassard, et al., 2003).
Research indicates that more frequently receiving prosocial acts from peers engenders a variety of adaptive outcomes. Experiences of peers’ prosocial behaviors are postulated to aid adolescent development of social competencies and self-esteem (Storch, Brassard, et al., 2003) and have been associated with greater life satisfaction and increased positive affect (Martin &
Huebner, 2007), as well as lower rates of rejection (Crick & Grotpeter, 1996). In contrast, Crick and Grotpeter (1996) found that fewer experiences of prosocial behavior related to higher rates of depression and loneliness in adolescents. Whereas adolescent affiliation with prosocial peers may enhance positive emotionality in peer interactions (Fabes, Hanish, Martin, Moss, &
Reesing, 2012), affiliations with delinquent peers may contribute to subsequent antisocial behavior (Laible et al., 2016). Moreover, multiple studies have demonstrated that the link between victimization experiences and adjustment difficulties (e.g., low life satisfaction, loneliness) depends on the receipt of prosocial behaviors from peers. That is, youth receiving
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 17 fewer prosocial behaviors from their peers may be at a heightened risk for more maladaptive trajectories (Martin & Huebner, 2007; Storch & Masia-Warner, 2004; Storch, Brassard, et al.,
2003; Storch, Nock, et al., 2003).
Parent- and emotion-related precursors to friendship quality and experiences of prosocial behavior. Researchers have widely proposed that friendships are strongly influenced by family relationships (Parke et al., 2002; Rubin et al., 2006; Sentse & Laird, 2010) and that friendships, in turn, may buffer the effects of negative family environments (Hartup &
Abecassis, 2002). Parent-child attachment security and connectedness have been shown to contribute to adolescents’ greater positive friendship quality (Clark & Ladd, 2000; Dwyer et al.,
2010; Rubin et al., 2006). However, little research has examined the contributions of parent emotion socialization practices to the quality of adolescents’ friendships and as such, the current study examines positive friendship quality as an outcome variable.
On the other hand, there have been many research efforts to explicate the role of emotion in the development of prosocial behaviors, primarily in young children (for a review, see
Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000). Prosocial children may have greater emotion understanding and more positive affective dispositions (Arsenio et al., 2000; Cassidy, Werner,
Rourke, Zubernis, & Balaraman, 2003; Eisenberg et al., 2006; Garner et al., 2008). Interestingly, one study found that children with high levels of negative emotionality may engage in high rates of prosocial behavior so long as they had adaptive emotion regulation skills (Gallagher, 2002).
Moreover, a substantial amount of research has established a link between emotion-related parenting practices and adolescent development of empathy and prosocial behaviors, particularly in younger samples (Brophy-Herb et al., 2011; Sebanc, 2003; Strayer & Roberts, 2004).
Generally, parents’ (primarily mothers’) support, warmth, responsiveness, and involvement in
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 18 their children’s lives have been linked to youths’ prosocial behaviors and motivations (Day &
Padilla-Walker, 2009; Ferreira et al., 2016; Laible et al., 2016; Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2015).
Recent research indicates that supportive parent emotion socialization may indirectly relate to children’s tendency to behave prosocially through maternal responsiveness (Brophy-
Herb et al., 2011), children’s anger regulation (Houltberg, Sheffield Morris, Cui, Henry, & Criss,
2016), and children’s effortful control (Miller, Dunsmore, & Smith, 2015). Supportive aspects of parents’ emotion discussions with their children (e.g., parent positive emotionality, labeling and explaining emotions) also appear to engender child prosociality (Brownell, Svetlova, Anderson,
Nichols, & Drummond, 2013; Garner, 2003; Garner et al., 2008). Still, there exists a dearth of research examining a) the receipt of prosocial behaviors, b) prosociality in adolescence, and c) potential mediators linking parent emotion socialization practices and youths’ receipt of prosocial behaviors (Eisenberg et al., 2006; Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2015; Persson, 2005).
The Current Study
The present study addresses several gaps in the parent and peer emotion socialization literature, particularly as these processes relate to adolescents’ negative and positive social experiences. Utilizing a cross-sectional, multi-informant design, we examine how parents’, primarily mothers’, emotion socialization practices are related to their children’s emotion socialization behaviors with their reciprocated, same-sex close friend that, in turn, contribute to social experiences for the youth. We tested the general model that peer emotion socialization would mediate the relation between maternal emotion socialization and adolescents’ social outcomes. Maternal emotion socialization was measured via mother-report, peer emotion socialization was assessed through friend-report of expected emotion socialization responses
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 19 from their friend (the parent’s child), and adolescents’ social experiences was measured through adolescent self-report.
This study offers a novel contribution to the existing literature in several ways. Foremost, few studies have assessed the prospective contributions of parental emotion socialization practices to adolescents’ social outcomes. Although research has begun to consider the role of emotion-related parenting practices as precursors to these outcomes (Eisenberg et al., 2006;
Kawabata et al., 2011; Parke et al., 2002; Schwartz et al., 1997), there is still great need for assessment of parent emotion socialization practices, particularly with respect to their child’s victimization, bullying, friendship quality, and experiences of prosocial behaviors.
Second, little research has focused on the role of peer emotion socialization in adolescents’ social adjustment. Adolescence marks an important developmental period for youth, in which they are privy to a variety of interaction settings and have greater exposure to peers
(Rubin et al., 2006). Moreover, friendships in adolescence become salient contexts for youths’ social and emotional development, distinct from parent-child relationships (for reviews, see
Berndt, 2004; Berndt & McCandless, 2009; Rubin et al., 2006). Thus, the ways that adolescents socialize their friends’ emotions are likely to contribute to their social behaviors and experiences.
Third, this research is one of the first studies to examine co-occurring maternal and peer emotion socialization practices. To the author’s knowledge, the only existing study assessing both parent and peer emotion socialization is that of Lougheed and colleagues (2016). In this seminal study, researchers were interested in how real-time parent and peer emotion socialization processes may independently contribute to adolescent depressive symptoms. Although Lougheed et al.’s (2016) study contributes to our understanding of these linkages with respect to depression, more research is needed to assess a) parent and peer emotion socialization practices
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 20 beyond conflict-oriented discussions, and b) adolescents’ social outcomes. Little is known about how parent-child and peer interactions may work together to affect adolescents’ socioemotional adjustment, despite the demonstrated need for research examining both parents and peers as socialization agents (Denham, 2007; Dodge et al., 2006; Parke et al., 2002; Sentse & Laird,
2010).
Finally, the social outcomes of interest in this study have often been neglected by researchers. To date, no study has assessed all five of these indices of social adjustment in tandem. Moreover, little is known about the precursors of adolescents’ experiences of others’ prosocial behaviors.
Hypotheses.
(1) Supportive responses. We hypothesized that adolescents whose mothers reported
utilizing more supportive emotion socialization strategies would report less frequent
experiences of relational and overt victimization, fewer bullying behaviors, greater
positive friendship quality, and greater receipt of peer prosocial behaviors. It was also
expected that how adolescents were perceived by their close friend to respond to their
close friend’s emotions (i.e., their emotion socialization practices) would underlie this
association such that more supportive maternal emotion socialization practices would
indirectly predict adolescents’ more positive social outcomes through adolescents’
supportive responses to their friends’ emotions.
(2) Unsupportive responses. We hypothesized that adolescents whose mothers reported
utilizing more unsupportive emotion socialization strategies would report more
frequent experiences of relational and overt victimization, greater bullying behaviors,
lower positive friendship quality, and less frequent receipt of peer prosocial
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 21
behaviors. It was also hypothesized that how adolescents’ responses to their friends’
emotions would explain these associations such that more unsupportive maternal
emotion socialization practices would indirectly predict adolescents’ more negative
social outcomes through adolescents’ unsupportive responses to their friends’
emotional displays.
Method
Participants
Participants were 158 youths in grades 6-8 (Mage = 12.67 years, SD = 11.61 months) who were recruited from local public schools and community programs in the southeastern United
States, as part of a larger study. Youths participated with their mothers and a self-identified, reciprocated close friend of the same sex. The sample was comprised of 59.5% girls, with 94 mothers of girls and 64 mothers of boys. Participants’ ethnicities were self-identified as
Caucasian (78.5%), African-American (11.4%), Hispanic/Latino (2.5%), Asian (1.3%), and
Multiracial (6.3%). Most adolescents identified as the same ethnicity as their participating close friend (81.0%). Members of the adolescent friendship dyad were also generally less than one year apart in age (87.3%) and in the same grade as their participating friend (79.7%). Within these friendship dyads, 90.5% of the youths participated with a reciprocated friend whom they described as their “very best friend” or “best friend.” The remaining 15 adolescents participated with their “good friend” or “friend.” The sample was comprised of mostly upper-middle class families (M = 49.16, SD = 10.28, range = 16.50-66.00; Hollingshead, 1975).
Measures
See Table 3 for internal consistencies and descriptive statistics.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 22
Maternal emotion socialization. Mothers completed the 45-item Emotions as a Child questionnaire (EAC; Magai, 1996) that assessed five responses that mothers may provide to their children’s displays of sadness, worry, and anger. These potential responses mapped onto five subscales in O’Neal and Magai’s (2005) ERSBs framework: namely, rewarding, overriding, magnifying, neglecting, and punishing subscales. The Reward subscale was comprised of 12 items (α = .85) and included statements such as “When my child was sad, I comforted him/her”.
The Override subscale consisted of nine items (α = .86) and included items such as “When my child was worried, I told him/her to cheer up”. The Magnify subscale was comprised of nine items (α = .83) and included items such as “When my child was angry, I got very angry”. The
Neglect subscale consisted of six items (α = .66) and included items such as “When my child was worried, I did not pay attention to his/her worry”. The Punish subscale consisted of nine items (α
= .84) and included statements such as “When my child was sad, I let him/her know that I did not approve of his/her sadness”. Mothers responded to items on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Never to 5
= Very Often). The EAC has demonstrated test-retest and internal reliability in past studies
(Magai, 1996; O’Neal & Magai, 2005).
Researchers sought to group these five subscales along dimensions of supportive and unsupportive emotion socialization responses. Initial examination of item factor loadings for the
Emotions as a Child questionnaire demonstrated that these strategy subscales mapped onto two distinct factors. Specifically, Reward and reverse-coded Neglect subscales loaded onto one factor, whereas the Override, Magnify, and Punish subscales loaded onto a second factor.
Consequently, the subscales were summed and averaged to provide two broad-based scales. An
Overall Supportive Maternal ES scale was thus comprised of the 18 items reflecting mothers’ rewarding and attentive responses (α = .88), and a 27-item Overall Unsupportive Maternal ES
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 23 mean was computed to represent mothers’ overriding, magnifying, and punishing responses (α =
.90).
Peer emotion socialization. Adolescents completed the 54-item You and Your Friends questionnaire (YYF; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2014) that assessed how they expected their close friend to respond to their emotional displays. This measure was derived from the parent version of the questionnaire, Emotions as a Child (EAC; Magai, 1996; O’Neal & Magai, 2005). These emotion responses mapped onto O’Neal and Magai’s (2005) ERSBs framework, with one minor difference. Though four subscales were still included that assessed rewarding, overriding, magnifying, and neglecting responses, the Punishing subscale was eliminated and two subscales were added to assess potential overt and relational victimizing emotion responses. The six subscales were each comprised of three items per emotion type (i.e., sadness, anger, worry):
Reward, Override, Magnify, Neglect, Overt Victimization, and Relational Victimization. The
Reward and Override subscales (α = .90; α = .87) included statements such as “If you were really sad, do you think your friend would help you deal with what’s made you feel sad?” and “If you were really worried, do you think your friend would try to get you to do something else, to take your mind off feeling worried?”, respectively. The Magnify subscale (α = .82) included statements such as “If you were really angry, do you think your friend would get angry, too?”, whereas the Neglect subscale (α = .88) included items such as “If you were really sad, do you think your friend would ignore the fact that you feel sad?”. Finally, the Overt Victimization subscale (α = .76) included statements such as “If you were really angry, do you think your friend would say something like ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ or ‘You’re stupid’?” and the
Relational Victimization subscale (α = .84) included items such as “If you were really worried, do you think your friend would tell other people secrets or mean things about you?”. Youths
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 24 responded to each item on a 5-point Likert scale that referenced the friend’s likelihood of engaging in the emotion socialization strategy (1 = Definitely would not do this, 3 = Would do this half the time, 5 = Definitely would do this). Studies have demonstrated test-retest and internal reliability for the YYF (Borowski, Zeman, & Braunstein, 2016; Klimes-Dougan et al.,
2014).
Because of the researchers’ primary interest in global supportive and unsupportive emotion responses, two distinct global scores were computed from these six subscales as has been done in the literature (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2014). Specifically, Reward, Override, and
Magnify subscales were summed and averaged to create a 27-item Supportive Peer ES score (α =
.92). Neglect, Overt Victimization, and Relational Victimization subscales were similarly totaled and averaged to provide a 27-item Unsupportive Peer ES score (α = .90).
Further, because of dyadic nature of the data collection processes, we were able to evaluate Friend A’s emotion socialization as perceived by Friend B in the dyad. That is, we computed a friend-report of adolescents’ emotion socialization strategies. In other words, Friend
A’s YYF Peer ES scores correspond to how Friend B perceived Friend A to respond to his or her emotional displays, and vice versa. Henceforth, analyses and discussions of Supportive Peer ES and Unsupportive Peer ES scores reflect this friend-report measure.
Adolescent social functioning. Youths’ experiences of peer victimization and prosocial behavior were assessed using the 13-item Social Experience Questionnaire (SEQ; Crick &
Grotpeter, 1996). The SEQ consisted of three subscales measuring the frequency that youth experienced overt victimization, relational victimization, and the receipt of prosocial acts from peers. The Overt Victimization subscale was comprised of three items (α = .74) and measured how often the adolescents were physically harmed or threatened by their peers (e.g., “How often
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 25 do you get pushed or shoved?”, “How often are you kicked or do you have your hair pulled?”).
The Relational Victimization subscale was comprised of five items (α = .84) and assessed how often the adolescents were exposed to peers’ attempts to harm their relationships with others
(e.g., “How often does a kid try to keep others from liking you by saying mean things about you?”, “How often are you left out on purpose when it’s time to do an activity?”). The Prosocial
Behavior subscale was comprised of five items (α = .81) and measured how often the adolescents received prosocial behaviors and intentions from their peers (e.g., “How often do you get help from another kid when you need it?”, “How often does another kid say something nice to you?”).
All items on the Overt Victimization, Relational Victimization, and Prosocial Behavior were rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Never to 5 = All the time). A score for each of the three subscales was created via summing all items in a subscale and computing an overall subscale mean. The SEQ has demonstrated good internal consistency and good test-retest reliability in past studies (Crick, 1996; Grotpeter & Crick, 1996; Storch, Crisp, Roberti, Bagner, & Masia-
Warner, 2005).
Youths completed the self-report 4-item The Kids in My Class questionnaire (KIMC;
Ladd et al., 1996) that assessed the frequency with which the adolescents engaged in bullying behaviors towards their peers (α = .84; e.g., “Do you pick on other kids in your class at school?”,
“Do you say mean things to other kids in your class at school?”). Youth responded on a 5-point
Likert scale (1 = Never to 5 = Always). The KIMC has demonstrated its internal consistency and test-retest reliability (Ladd et al., 1996).
Youths also reported on the quality of their close friendship in the 18-item Friendship
Quality Questionnaire (FQQ; Parker & Asher, 1993). The FQQ consisted of six subscales, each of which was comprised of three items. The Conflict and Betrayal subscale (α = .85) assessed the
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 26 degree to which the youths’ friendship was characterized by argumentative interactions and mistrust (e.g., “[Friend] and I argue a lot”). The Companionship and Recreation subscale (α =
.68) measured the extent to which the friends participated in enjoyable leisure activities with one another (e.g., “[Friend] and I always pick each other as partners for things”). The Conflict
Resolution subscale (α = .55) assessed the degree to which the youths were able to efficiently and fairly resolve disagreements within the friendship (e.g., “[Friend] and I make up easily when we have a fight”). The Help and Guidance subscale (α = .62) measured the extent to which the friends assisted one another with day-to-day tasks or problems (e.g., “[Friend] and I give advice when figuring things out”). The Intimate Exchange subscale (α = .83) assessed the degree to which the youths’ friendship was characterized by intimate self-disclosures and discussion of emotions (e.g., “[Friend] and I talk about the things that make us sad”). The Validation and
Caring subscale (α = .77) measured the extent to which the friendship was characterized by caring and supportiveness (e.g., “[Friend] and I make each other feel important and special”). All items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Not at all true to 5 = Really true). Studies have demonstrated the high internal reliability and validity of the FQQ (Parker & Asher, 1993).
The five subscales assessing positive aspects of the youths’ friendships (Companionship and Recreation, Conflict Resolution, Help and Guidance, Intimate Exchange, and Validation and
Caring) were significantly and positively correlated (r = .26 to .56). As such, their items were summed and averaged to create a 15-item index of overall positive friendship quality (α = .86), as has been done and suggested in previous research (Berndt & McCandless, 2009; Borowski et al., 2016).
Procedure
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 27
Researchers obtained university institutional research board approval, as well as informed written consent from participants’ mothers and verbal assent from all participating adolescents, prior to the beginning of the study procedures. Families learned about the project through school- administered fliers and written postings at local community centers. Participating adolescents were required to be in middle school (grades 6-8) and to have a same-sex close friend who was willing to complete the study with them. Youths and their caregivers mostly participated at their homes (63.3%) or in the university laboratory (29.7%), with remaining families completing interviews at a public library (7.0%).
The adolescent and his or her close friend were separately interviewed by trained research assistants who read questionnaires aloud to each adolescent. During this time, the youths’ mothers independently completed questionnaires assessing their behaviors towards their children. All adolescent and mother questionnaires were counterbalanced within and across interviews. The protocol in its entirety took approximately one hour and each adolescent was compensated $10 in cash for their time.
Analytic Plan
All models were computed using the Process macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). This statistical software estimates model parameters via an ordinary least squares regression-based path-analytic framework. It also simultaneously models direct and indirect effects and allows for the construction of bias-corrected bootstrapping confidence intervals for parameter products.
This approach is further strengthened by its lack of assumption about the normality of the variable sampling distributions, in contrast to other approaches (e.g., Sobel’s test; Hayes, 2013).
Ten mediation models were constructed using the Process statistical software. All models examined how maternal emotion socialization may relate to adolescents’ emotion socialization
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 28 behaviors (path a), which may, in turn, affect adolescents’ social outcomes (path b). More specifically, we tested two related sets of hypotheses about the indirect effects in these models.
For Hypotheses Set 1, five of the models assessed how supportive maternal emotion socialization strategies may indirectly contribute to youths’ positive social outcomes, through youths’ supportive peer emotion socialization practices. For Hypotheses Set 2, the remaining five models estimated how unsupportive maternal emotion socialization strategies may indirectly contribute to adolescents’ negative social outcomes, through adolescents’ unsupportive responses to their close friend’s emotion displays. Thus, model mediators were either Overall Supportive Peer ES or Overall Unsupportive Peer ES scores. One of the five social outcomes of interest (i.e., overt victimization, relational victimization, bullying behaviors, positive friendship quality, receipt of prosocial behavior) served as the dependent variable for each supportive or unsupportive emotion socialization model, thereby accounting for all 10 mediation models.
Although we were principally interested in the indirect effects of these models, direct effects between maternal emotion socialization and adolescents’ social outcomes (path c) were also examined, since little research has assessed these potential links in an adolescent sample. In estimating the simple mediation indirect effects, Process additionally provided estimates of the direct effects. As such and under Hypotheses Set 1, we tested for evidence of significant direct links between supportive maternal emotion socialization and adolescents’ positive social outcomes, while holding adolescents’ supportive peer emotion socialization practices constant.
Under Hypotheses Set 2, we tested for evidence of significant direct links between unsupportive maternal emotion socialization and adolescents’ negative social outcomes, while holding adolescents’ unsupportive peer emotion socialization practices constant. Since these direct effects were estimated as part of the 10 simple mediation models, all direct effects were a)
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 29 estimated independent of the mediators’ influence and b) relating to one of the five social outcomes of interest. We report these each of these 10 direct effects after the reporting of their corresponding indirect effect.
See Figure 1 and Figure 2 for the conceptual and statistical diagrams of the simple mediation models tested. For all direct and indirect effects, 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals were constructed and were based on 10,000 bootstrap samples.
Results
Correlations between study variables are reported in Table 4.
Hypotheses Set 1: Supportive Responses
We hypothesized that mothers’ supportive emotion socialization responses would predict adolescents’ adaptive social outcomes, through adolescents’ own supportive emotion socialization behaviors towards their friends. Further, we anticipated that supportive maternal emotion socialization would predict adolescents’ positive social outcomes, while holding adolescents’ supportive peer emotion socialization practices constant. See Tables 5 and 6 for indirect and direct effect parameter products, unstandardized estimates, and confidence intervals relating to Hypotheses Set 1.
Adolescent experiences of overt victimization. Simple mediation analysis indicated that supportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly related to adolescent experiences of peer overt victimization through its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, ab =
-.04, 95% CI [-.12, -.001] (see Table 5 and Figure 3). Mothers who reported greater supportive emotion socialization practices towards their adolescent’s emotional displays had adolescents who were expected to exhibit greater supportive emotion socialization responses to their close friend’s emotions (path a = .24). In turn, adolescents who provided more supportive emotion
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 30 socialization responses to their close friend reported experiencing fewer incidences of overt victimization by their peers (path b = -.18). There was no evidence that supportive maternal emotion socialization was directly related to adolescent experiences of overt victimization, independent of its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, path c = .12, 95% CI
[-.15, .38] (see Table 6).
Adolescent experiences of relational victimization. Simple mediation analysis revealed that there was no evidence that supportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly associated with adolescent experiences of peer relational victimization through its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, ab = -.02, 95% CI [-.12, .02] (see Table 5). There was no evidence that supportive maternal emotion socialization was directly associated with adolescent experiences of relational victimization, independent of its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, path c = .08, 95% CI [-.23, .38] (see Table 6).
Adolescent bullying behaviors. Simple mediation analysis revealed that supportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly associated with adolescent bullying through its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, ab = -.05, 95% CI [-.14, -.004] (see
Table 5 and Figure 4). Mothers who reported greater supportive emotion socialization practices towards their adolescent’s emotional displays had adolescents who were expected to exhibit greater supportive emotion socialization responses to their close friend’s emotions (path a = .24).
In turn, adolescents who provided more supportive emotion socialization responses to their close friend reported engaging in fewer bullying behaviors (path b = -.20). Supportive maternal emotion socialization was also marginally directly associated with adolescent bullying, independent of its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, path c = -.21, 95% CI
[-.43, .005] (see Table 6 and Figure 4). Mothers who reported engaging in more supportive
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 31 emotion socialization responses towards their adolescent’s emotion displays had adolescents who reported engaging in fewer bullying behaviors.
Adolescent positive friendship quality. Simple mediation analysis revealed that supportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly associated with adolescent positive friendship quality through its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, ab = .08,
95% CI [.01, .19] (see Table 5 and Figure 5). Mothers who reported greater supportive emotion socialization practices towards their adolescent’s emotional displays had adolescents who were expected to exhibit greater supportive emotion socialization responses to their close friend’s emotions (path a = .24). In turn, adolescents who provided more supportive emotion socialization responses to their close friend reported having a more positive quality friendship
(path b = .31). Supportive maternal emotion socialization was also directly associated with adolescent positive friendship quality, independent of its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, path c = .32, 95% CI [.09, .55] (see Table 6 and Figure 5). Mothers who reported engaging in more supportive emotion socialization responses towards their adolescent’s emotion displays had adolescents who reported having a more positive quality friendship with their close friend.
Adolescent experiences of prosocial behavior. Simple mediation analysis indicated that supportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly related to adolescent experiences of peer prosocial behavior through its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, ab =
.05, 95% CI [.002, .16] (see Table 5 and Figure 6). Mothers who reported greater supportive emotion socialization practices towards their adolescent’s emotional displays had adolescents who were expected to exhibit greater supportive emotion socialization responses to their close friend’s emotions (path a = .24). In turn, adolescents who provided more supportive emotion
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 32 socialization responses to their close friend reported being the recipient of more prosocial acts from their peers (path b = .22). There was no evidence that supportive maternal emotion socialization was directly related to adolescent experiences of prosocial behavior, independent of its effect on adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization, path c = -.02, 95% CI [-.27, .24] (see
Table 6).
Hypotheses Set 2: Unsupportive responses
We hypothesized that mothers’ unsupportive emotion socialization responses would predict adolescents’ maladaptive social outcomes, through adolescents’ own unsupportive emotion socialization behaviors towards their friends. Further, we anticipated that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization would predict adolescents’ negative social outcomes, while holding adolescents’ unsupportive peer emotion socialization practices constant. See Tables 7 and 8 for indirect and direct effect parameter products, unstandardized estimates, and confidence intervals relating to Hypotheses Set 2.
Adolescent experiences of overt victimization. Simple mediation analysis revealed that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was not significantly indirectly associated with adolescent experiences of peer overt victimization through its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization, ab = .02, 95% CI [-.02, .09] (see Table 7). Unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was directly associated with adolescent experiences of overt victimization, independent of its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization, path c = -.28, 95% CI [-.49, -.07] (see Table 8 and Figure 7). That is, mothers who reported engaging in more unsupportive emotion socialization responses towards their adolescent’s emotion displays had adolescents who reported experiencing lower rates of overt victimization by their peers.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 33
Adolescent experiences of relational victimization. Simple mediation analysis indicated that there was no evidence that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly related to adolescent experiences of peer relational victimization through its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization, ab = .003, 95% CI [-.02, .06] (see Table 7).
There was no evidence that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was directly associated with adolescent experiences of relational victimization, independent of its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization, path c = -.14, 95% CI [-.39, .11] (see Table 8).
Adolescent bullying behaviors. Simple mediation analysis indicated that there was no evidence that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly related to adolescent bullying behaviors through its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization (ab =
.01, 95% CI [-.02, .07] (see Table 7). There was no evidence that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was directly related to adolescent bullying behaviors, independent of its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization, path c = .07, 95% CI [-.11, .25] (see Table 8).
Adolescent positive friendship quality. Simple mediation analysis indicated that there was no evidence that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly related to adolescent positive friendship quality through its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization, ab = -.01, 95% CI [-.08, .02] (see Table 7). Neither was there evidence that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was directly associated with adolescent positive friendship quality, independent of its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization, path c = -.03, 95% CI [-.23, .17] (see Table 8).
Adolescent experiences of prosocial behavior. Simple mediation analysis revealed that there was no evidence that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was indirectly associated with adolescent experiences of peer prosocial behavior through its effect on adolescents’
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 34 unsupportive emotion socialization, ab = -.004, 95% CI [-.05, .01] (see Table 7). Neither was there evidence that unsupportive maternal emotion socialization was directly related to adolescent experiences of prosocial behavior, independent of its effect on adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization, path c = .14, 95% CI [-.07, .35] (see Table 8).
Discussion
Despite the recent strides made in the emotion socialization literature, there exist several prominent gaps in our understanding of these processes. First, few studies have examined the potential contributions of parental or peer emotion socialization to adolescents’ social adjustment. Second, very little, if any, research has assessed how parental and peer emotion socialization practices may co-occur and interact, particularly with respect to subsequent socioemotional outcomes for youth. Finally, there remains a dearth of research focusing on peer victimization, bullying behaviors, friendship quality, and receipt of prosocial behavior as adolescent social outcomes of interest. The current study extends this previous research by assessing the indirect and direct links between parent and peer emotion socialization processes and adolescents’ social adjustment. The first aim of the study was to test for indirect or direct associations between supportive emotion socialization processes and adolescents’ positive social outcomes through supportive peer emotion socialization. The second study aim involved examination of indirect and direct links between unsupportive emotion socialization processes and adolescents’ negative social outcomes through unsupportive peer emotion socialization.
Overall, our results offer partial support for our hypotheses. Examination of the ways in which parent emotion socialization practices may contribute to adolescent social functioning directly and through adolescent emotion socialization behaviors contributes insights into our understanding of socioemotional processes occurring during adolescence.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 35
Supportive Emotion Socialization Findings
Adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization behaviors towards their close friends did explain the association between mothers’ supportive emotion socialization practices and adolescents’ adaptive social outcomes. Specifically, these indirect links emerged for models predicting adolescents’ overt victimization, bullying behaviors, positive friendship quality, and receipt of peers’ prosocial behaviors. In each of these five models, the link between mothers’ supportive emotion socialization behaviors and adolescents’ own supportive emotion socialization practices was significant. This relation suggests that the supportive ways that mothers respond to their adolescents’ emotional displays are associated with adolescents’ own supportive emotion responses to their close friends. Despite the established need for research examining both parents and peers as socialization agents (for reviews, see Dodge et al., 2006;
Parke et al., 2002; Sentse & Laird, 2010), to the author’s knowledge, these findings are among the first to confirm this association from maternal to peer emotion socialization practices.
The associations between adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization practices and their social outcomes (i.e., overt victimization, bullying, friendship quality, prosocial behaviors) both reinforce the adaptive nature of high-quality adolescent friendships and provide novel insights into the role of peer emotion socialization in social adjustment. Given that high-quality friendships are often characterized by intimacy, self-disclosure, and emotional support (Berndt &
McCandless, 2009; Dodge et al., 2006; Nickerson & Nagle, 2005; von Salisch, 2001), supportive emotion socialization practices also seem to be a characteristic of these friendships. Further, these findings lend support to the ways in which supportive emotion socialization behaviors may buffer youth against a variety of deleterious social outcomes, as has been found in previous
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 36 research (Bollmer et al., 2005; Malcolm et al., 2006; Rubin et al., 2004; Wojslawowicz Bowker et al., 2006).
In terms of specific direct and indirect effects to negative social outcomes, greater supportive maternal emotion socialization practices predicted adolescents’ lower rates of overt victimization and bullying, through adolescents’ greater supportive emotion socializing behaviors. The direct link between supportive maternal emotion socialization and negative social outcomes held only for adolescent bullying. Collectively, these significant results are consistent with the established link between parents’ supportive emotion socialization and children’s adaptive emotion regulation (McElwain et al., 2007; Thompson & Meyer, 2007), as well as the known associations between emotion regulation difficulties and victimization and aggression
(Dodge et al., 2006; Shields & Cicchetti, 2001; Mahady Wilton et al., 2000). That is, adolescents who receive more supportive responses may be more able to adaptively understand and respond to emotions, and thereby may be less likely to engage in bullying behaviors and be targeted by their peers’ physically aggressive behaviors.
To our surprise, there were no significant direct or indirect links between supportive maternal emotion socialization and relational victimization. Since relational victimization can occur within close, dyadic friendships (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2011; Crick & Nelson, 2002;
Grotpeter & Crick, 1996), a relationally-aggressive adolescent may coercively request emotional support (e.g., supportive responses to emotional displays) from his or her close friend. As such, some adolescents may respond supportively to their close friend’s emotional displays and still experience relational victimization. During this developmental period, loyalty to friends is highly valued and adolescents may be particularly motivated to maintain and strengthen their close friendships (Adams & Laursen, 2001; von Salisch, 2001). Thus, youths may frequently excuse or
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 37 overlook their close friends’ relationally aggressive behaviors. Alternatively, supportive maternal emotion socialization practices may indeed reinforce adolescents’ own supportive responses to their close friend’s emotional displays, but youth may still be at risk for victimization by their larger peer group.
In terms of specific direct and indirect effects to positive social outcomes, greater supportive maternal emotion socialization practices predicted adolescents’ greater positive friendship quality and receipt of prosocial behaviors by their peers, through adolescents’ greater supportive emotion socializing behaviors. The direct link between supportive maternal emotion socialization and positive outcomes held only for adolescent positive friendship quality. Overall, these results suggest that both parent and peer supportive emotion socialization practices contribute to adolescents’ adaptive social outcomes. Moreover, these findings are consistent with
Eisenberg et al.’s (2006) theorized cyclical process in which socially-competent (e.g., emotionally-supported) children may perform more prosocial acts (e.g., provide supportive responses to their close friend’s emotional displays), thereby eliciting positive behaviors from peers in turn (e.g., positive friendship quality, peers’ prosocial behaviors) and reinforcing original prosocial behaviors. Specific to the outcome of positive friendship quality, these results not only reinforce our hypotheses that high-quality friendships may be characterized by supportive emotion responses, but also suggest that supportive emotion responses may reciprocally enhance friendship quality.
Regarding the findings concerning adolescents’ receipt of prosocial behavior, an adolescent’s close friend may perceive the adolescent’s supportive emotion responses as comforting and encouraging of his or her emotional displays. In turn, the close friend may engage in more prosocial behaviors towards the adolescent or even speak highly of the
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 38 adolescent to other peers, indirectly promoting others’ prosocial behaviors towards the adolescent. These results suggest that peer emotion socialization may serve as one mechanism through which supportive maternal emotion socialization influences adolescents’ prosocial experiences. Somewhat surprisingly, mothers’ supportive emotion socialization practices did not directly relate to adolescents’ experiences of peers’ prosocial behaviors. Such findings deviate from those of past studies that have linked supportive emotion socialization behaviors and adolescents’ greater sociability, prosocial behavior, and respect among peers (Buckholdt,
Kitzmann, et al., 2014; Eisenberg et al., 1998; Houltberg et al., 2016). However, as explained by the significant indirect model, adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization behaviors mediate this relation, which was not investigated in the prior research.
Unsupportive Emotion Socialization Findings
Contrary to hypotheses, adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization behaviors towards their close friends did not explain the association between mothers’ unsupportive emotion socialization practices and adolescents’ maladaptive social outcomes. There was no significant relation between unsupportive maternal emotion socialization and adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization practices in any of the models. This lack of significant findings may be due to a variety of factors. Perhaps parents’ supportive but not unsupportive emotion socialization practices may be most salient to children’s subsequent responses to their close friend’s emotional displays. It could also be that parents’ greater unsupportive responses may be linked to adolescents’ unsupportive responses towards their friends, but perhaps only for youth who are low in adaptive emotion regulation or other emotional competence skills.
Alternatively, some adolescents who receive unsupportive responses from their mothers may quickly cycle through transient close friendships characterized by high levels of unsupportive
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 39 emotion responses. It would be interesting to selectively examine the youth in our study who participated with a relatively new close friend to determine whether the pattern of unsupportive peer responses differs when compared to youths with a longer friendship history. This lack of significance may have also been due to the generally low frequency of unsupportive responses on the two socialization questionnaires. Finally, this pattern of findings may have emerged due to a lack of overlap between the definitions of unsupportive for the parent versus the friend.
Specifically, the parent measure (i.e., EAC) was comprised of mothers’ magnifying, overriding, and punishing responses, whereas the adolescent measure (i.e., YYF) included youths’ neglecting, overtly victimizing, and relationally victimizing responses. In sum, more research is needed to better understand this relation.
Also noteworthy are the statistically significant associations between adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization practices and three social outcomes (i.e., overt victimization, bullying, positive friendship quality). Despite the overall non-significance of the unsupportive emotion socialization models, these specific effects were all in the expected direction, such that youth who responded more unsupportively to their close friend’s emotional displays had less adaptive social outcomes. These findings lend modest support to the role of peer emotion socialization in adolescents’ social adjustment.
The direct link between unsupportive maternal emotion socialization practices and social outcomes only held for adolescent overt victimization. Contrary to hypotheses, greater levels of mothers’ unsupportive emotion socialization behaviors related to adolescents’ fewer overt victimization experiences with peers. These results may be explained by the possible development of adolescents’ resiliency despite their mothers’ unsupportive emotion socialization behaviors, as some youths may be less deterred and discouraged by these responses to their
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 40 emotional displays. Consequently, these adolescents may be or, at least, outwardly appear to be resilient against their peers’ aggressive behaviors, which may mitigate the frequency of perceived overt victimization experiences. Additionally, such resiliency against unsupportive responses may prompt the development of adolescents’ own aggressive behaviors, which may serve to mark adolescents as less viable targets of aggression. Alternatively, this relation may be due to the ways in which mothers’ greater unsupportive emotion responses affect youths’ emotional competencies. Consistent with the literature linking aggression and emotion dysregulation (Arsenio et al., 2000; Garner et al., 2008), youths who receive more unsupportive responses to their emotional displays may be less likely to express feelings of sadness, worry, and anger around their peers. A moderate level of emotion inhibition may be adaptive among peers (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Perry-Parrish & Zeman, 2011), so these adolescents may experience less overt victimization from their peers. Thus, these links may be moderated by adolescents’ levels of emotion regulation and/or emotion inhibition.
Limitations and Future Directions
Despite the strengths of the current study, several limitations and future directions warrant acknowledgment. First, participants had generally low mean scores and low variance on several of the study variables, including unsupportive maternal and unsupportive peer emotion socialization, adolescent overt and relational victimization, and adolescent bullying behaviors
(see Table 3). Although mothers’ low unsupportive emotion socialization scores are consistent with past findings demonstrating the greater prevalence of supportive emotion responses (versus unsupportive responses; Jobe-Shields et al., 2014), these low scores and their lack of variability may have contributed to several of the non-significant findings, particularly in models with unsupportive emotion socialization practices. Thus, researchers would benefit from extending
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 41 these findings to include more aggressive and victimized youths, as well as more diverse contextual frameworks (e.g., low-quality parent-child relationships, low-quality close friendships) in which emotion socialization processes occur.
Second, we utilized aggregate scores of parent and adolescent responses to three emotions (i.e., sadness, worry, anger) to limit the number of models tested. There has been a recent burgeoning of evidence that parents’ emotion socialization practices differ by the type of emotion displayed by the child (O’Neal & Magai, 2005; Shortt, Stoolmiller, Smith-Shine, Eddy,
& Sheeber, 2010; Zeman et al., 2013). Parents have been shown to desire greater change in their daughters’ than their sons’ inhibitions of sadness, though it is less clear if parents would also be more accepting of girls’ inhibitions of other emotions, such as anger (Cassano et al., 2007).
O’Neal and Magai (2005) found that emotion-specific socialization models offered a better fit for their data than models using a global negative affect composite and that there were significant differences between the ways that parents validated adolescents’ sadness versus anger. Research also suggests that children and adolescents may be cognizant of these emotion- specific socialization differences and that they may expect their mothers to become more upset at their displays of anger than sadness (Shipman & Zeman, 2001; Zeman & Shipman, 1997).
Interestingly, these differences in emotion type may also partially account for differing developmental trajectories between parent emotion socialization and psychological outcomes for youth (O’Neal & Magai, 2005). For example, Shortt and colleagues (2010) demonstrated that maternal emotion coaching of anger, in particular, was associated with better adolescent anger regulation, which in turn was linked with less externalizing symptomatology. Thus, there exists a need for research examining the role of emotion type in emotion socialization, as well as parent
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 42 and peer socialization of positive emotions and how other modes of emotion socialization (e.g., modeling, emotion discussions) may contribute to youths’ social adjustment.
Third, the cross-sectional nature of this study precludes interpretations of causality, as many of the processes assessed may bidirectionally influence one another. For example, adolescents’ social experiences may contribute to adolescents’ subsequent supportive and unsupportive responses to their peers’ emotional displays. There has been a call for research accounting for these potential two-way interactions (Cassano & Zeman, 2010; Root &
Rasmussen, 2015) and cross-lagged longitudinal designs may provide greater insight into the directionality of these links.
Fourth, this study did not systematically examine the role of adolescents’ fathers in emotion socialization processes. Recent research suggests that fathers and mothers may often differentially socialize their children’s emotions (Cassano et al., 2007; Chaplin, Cole, & Zahn-
Waxler, 2005; Hunter et al., 2011; Stocker, Richmond, Rhoades, & Kiang, 2007; Wong,
McElwain, & Halberstadt, 2009; Zeman et al., 2013). For instance, mothers, in comparison to fathers, tend to facilitate more emotion discussions with their adolescents and provide more accepting, encouraging, and problem-solving responses to their adolescents’ emotional displays
(Cassano et al., 2007; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007; Stocker et al., 2007). Fathers, on the other hand, report being less active socializing agents in their adolescents’ emotional lives (Garside &
Klimes-Dougan, 2002) and tend to exhibit higher rates of minimizing, neglecting, or overriding youths’ negative emotions than mothers (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007). As such, future studies should consider the inclusion of fathers (and other caregivers) as socializing agents.
Fifth, given the scope of this study, we did not assess mothers’ psychopathology, beliefs about emotion expression, and emotional competencies with respect to their supportive and
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 43 unsupportive emotion responses. Parents with greater levels of psychopathology symptoms may exhibit more unsupportive reactions to their children’s emotional displays (Breaux, Harvey, &
Lugo-Candelas, 2016). Moreover, it seems that parent internalizing problems may lead to parent- child discussions with greater focus on negative affect, which may in turn, lead to heightened internalizing problems for young children (van der Pol et al., 2016). In terms of parent emotion- related beliefs, parents who report more tolerant beliefs about their children’s negative emotions tend to exhibit fewer non-supportive responses to their children’s emotions (Wong et al., 2009).
Additionally, researchers have postulated and offered preliminary evidence of the association between parents’ regulation of their own emotions and their emotion socialization efforts, such that parents with greater dysregulation may provide more unsupportive responses to their adolescents (Buckholdt, Parra, et al., 2014; Cassano et al., 2007). Thus, parents’ psychopathology and unsupportive emotion responses may be mechanisms by which parent emotion regulation difficulties are transmitted from parent to adolescent.
Sixth, there are several child-level factors that, in tandem with parent-level dynamics, may be of value to future research. Foremost, numerous studies have documented the ways in which parents and peers may socialize adolescents’ emotions differentially on the basis of gender
(Chaplin et al., 2005; Garside & Klimes-Dougan, 2002; Legerski, Biggs, Greenhoot, & Sampilo,
2015; Rose, Carlson, & Waller, 2007; Shortt et al., 2016). For instance, parents seem to encourage more sadness expression in their daughters than their sons, and fathers, in particular, report validating their daughters and punishing their sons for similar expressions of sadness and fear (Cassano et al., 2007; Garside & Klimes-Dougan, 2002; Zeman et al., 2013). However, due to our utilization of global supportive and unsupportive emotion socialization responses, we did not include gender as a moderator in our models. Future research should consider the role of
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 44 child gender. For example, how might parents’ supportive and unsupportive responses to specific emotions (e.g., sadness, anger) differentially put adolescent girls and boys at risk for victimization by their peers?
Finally, future studies should consider utilization of serial mediation models to test how child-level characteristics may interact with, and potentially exacerbate the effects of unsupportive parent emotion socialization practices. Research suggests that adolescents with more dysregulated behaviors (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007), fewer emotion regulation skills
(Cassano et al., 2007), and higher rates of internalizing symptomatology (Lougheed, Hollenstein,
Lichtwarck-Aschoff, Granic et al., 2015) may be at risk for the receipt of more unsupportive parental ERSBs, though this relation is likely bidirectional. Adolescents with higher levels of emotional arousal and intensity may provide parents with more opportunities to positively or negatively socialize their youths’ emotions (Dunsmore et al., 2016). Recently, researchers found that adolescents who reported heightened levels of baseline internalizing symptoms perceived their mothers as more often responding in punishing and magnifying ways to their expressions of emotions (Jobe-Shields et al., 2014). In other studies, parents have indeed tended to respond less supportively to the emotional displays of adolescents with depressive symptomatology
(Lougheed et al., 2015; Yap et al., 2008). Such unsupportive parental responses (e.g., ignoring or yelling at adolescents for their emotional displays) may further exacerbate the dysregulated aspects of these behaviors over time (Cassano et al., 2007; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007).
Conclusion
Despite these limitations, the current study provides a substantive contribution to our understanding of how emotion processes relate to youths’ social functioning during adolescence.
Specifically, it extends previous research by examining both maternal and peer emotion
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 45 socialization practices in the context of the same individual, particularly as they relate to adolescents’ social experiences (i.e., overt and relational victimization, bullying behaviors, positive friendship quality, receipt of prosocial behaviors). Our results collectively suggest that supportive maternal emotion socialization practices are directly and indirectly (i.e., through adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization responses) associated with adaptive social outcomes (i.e., overt peer victimization, bullying, friendship quality, receipt of prosocial behavior) for youth. These findings generate important implications for the socially adaptive nature of supportive emotion socialization practices within the parent-child and adolescent-peer dyad contexts.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 46
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EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 70
Table 1
Factor Analytic Structure of Scale Assessing Maternal Emotion Socialization (EAC)
Factor 1 2 Item Supportive ES Unsupportive ES
Maternal Sadness Socialization “When my child was sad…” 1. I responded to his/her sadness. .633 -.137 2. I told him/her to stop being sad. -.113 .688 3. I helped him/her deal with the issue that made him/her sad. .721 .018 4. I got very sad. .456 .287 5. I told him/her that he/she was acting younger than his/her age. -.118 .651 6. I asked him/her what made him/her sad. .728 .129 7. I told him/her not to worry. .025 .731 8. I expressed that I was very sad. .257 .454 9. I let my child know I did not approve of his/her sadness. -.159 .670 10. I gave him/her something he/she liked. -.042 .422 11. I told him/her to cheer up. -.008 .723 12. I took time to focus on him/her. .736 -.051 13. I got very upset. .205 .341 14. I did not pay attention to his/her sadness. -.448 .257 15. I comforted him/her. .770 -.060 1 2 Item Supportive ES Unsupportive ES
Maternal Anger Socialization “When my child was angry…” 1. I responded to his/her anger. .426 -.166 2. I told him/her to stop being angry. .435 .587 3. I helped him/her deal with the issue that made him/her angry. .659 -.399
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 71
4. I got very angry. .115 .648 5. I told him/her that he/she was acting younger than his/her age. .278 .603 6. I asked him/her what made him/her angry. .638 -.385 7. I told him/her not to worry. .592 .265 8. I expressed that I was very angry. .221 .650 9. I let my child know I did not approve of his/her anger. .290 .601 10. I gave him/her something he/she liked. .151 .228 11. I told him/her to cheer up. .497 .273 12. I took time to focus on him/her. .627 -.505 13. I got very upset. .233 .503 14. I did not pay attention to his/her anger. -.265 .405 15. I comforted him/her. .560 -.458 1 2 Item Supportive ES Unsupportive ES Maternal Worry Socialization “When my child was worried…” 1. I responded to his/her worry. .779 .043 2. I told him/her to stop being worried. -.004 .674 3. I helped him/her deal with the issue that made him/her worried. .822 -.139 4. I got very worried. .303 .619 5. I told him/her that he/she was acting younger than his/her age. -.038 .666 6. I asked him/her what made him/her worried. .674 -.218 7. I told him/her not to worry. .128 .544 8. I expressed that I was very worried. .072 .663 9. I let my child know I did not approve of his/her worry. -.102 .663 10. I gave him/her something he/she liked. .083 .505 11. I told him/her to cheer up. .172 .568 12. I took time to focus on him/her. .792 -.034 13. I got very upset. .085 .631 14. I did not pay attention to his/her worry. -.300 .405 15. I comforted him/her. .770 -.033 Note. Principal components analysis extraction using varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 72
Table 2
Factor Analytic Structure of Scale Assessing Peer Emotion Socialization (YYF)
Factor 1 2 Item Supportive Peer ES Unsupportive Peer ES
Peer Sadness Socialization “If you were really sad, do you think your friend would…” 1. Try to get you to do something else, to take your mind off feeling .551 -.238 sad 2. Push you away or hit you -.347 .455 3. Not say or do anything about it -.476 .296 4. Say that they’ll stop liking you if you don’t change your attitude -.076 .634 5. Get sad too .525 .138 6. Help you to deal with what’s made you feel sad .757 -.228 7. Act like he/she doesn’t notice that you feel sad -.484 .456 8. Say something like “You’re being ridiculous,” or “You’re stupid” -.155 .678 9. Say something like “Cheer up!” .638 .013 10. Leave you out of the group or any activities for a while .023 .742 11. Say that he/she doesn’t like it when you act this way .105 .626 12. Get upset at what’s going on .383 .452 13. Say something like “It’s okay, we all feel sad sometimes.” .664 -.266 14. Ignore the fact that you feel sad -.330 .516 15. Tell other people secrets or mean things about you -.228 .597 16. Tell you that things aren’t so bad .618 -.004 17. Tell you that you have a good reason to feel really sad .527 -.039 18. Ask you about what has made you feel sad .698 -.109 1 2 Item Supportive Peer ES Unsupportive Peer ES
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 73
Peer Anger Socialization “If you were really angry, do you think your friend would…” 1. Say something like “Cheer up!” .692 -.096 2. Say something like “You’re being ridiculous,” or “You’re stupid” -.159 .586 3. Act like he/she doesn’t notice that you feel angry -.380 .403 4. Help you to deal with what’s made you feel angry .687 -.328 5. Get angry too .451 .420 6. Say that they’ll stop liking you if you don’t change your attitude -.036 .590 7. Not say or do anything about it -.288 .460 8. Push you away or hit you -.105 .510 9. Try to get you to do something else, to take your mind off feeling .557 -.231 angry 10. Ask you about what has made you feel angry .735 -.103 11. Tell you that you have a good reason to feel really angry .639 .054 12. Tell you that things aren’t so bad .627 -.265 13. Tell other people secrets or mean things about you -.087 .588 14. Ignore the fact that you feel angry -.368 .501 15. Say something like “It’s okay, we all feel angry sometimes.” .658 -.364 16. Get upset at what’s going on .549 .331 17. Say that he/she doesn’t like it when you act this way .052 .548 18. Leave you out of the group or any activities for a while -.072 .642 1 2 Item Supportive Peer ES Unsupportive Peer ES
Peer Worry Socialization “If you were really worried, do you think your friend would…” 1. Get worried too .529 -.025 2. Say that they’ll stop liking you if you don’t change your attitude -.018 .620 3. Not say or do anything about it -.208 .501 4. Push you away or hit you -.279 .491 5. Try to get you to do something else, to take your mind off feeling .355 -.294 worried
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 74
6. Ignore the fact that you feel worried -.191 .666 7. Say something like “It’s okay, we all feel worried sometimes.” .642 -.311 8. Get upset at what’s going on .496 .178 9. Say that he/she doesn’t like it when you act this way -.012 .424 10. Leave you out of the group or any activities for a while -.057 .588 11. Say something like “Cheer up!” .624 -.189 12. Say something like “You’re being ridiculous,” or “You’re stupid” -.073 .625 13. Act like he/she doesn’t notice that you feel worried -.198 .656 14. Help you to deal with what’s made you feel worried .617 -.442 15. Ask you about what has made you feel worried .703 -.255 16. Tell you that you have a good reason to feel really worried .692 -.025 17. Tell you that things aren’t so bad .685 .620 18. Tell other people secrets or mean things about you -.052 .501
Note. Principal components analysis extraction using varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 75
Table 3
Means, Standard Deviations, and Psychometric Properties of Major Study Variables
Range Variable (n = 158) M SD α Potential Actual Skew Demographics Gender 0.41 0.49 — 0-1 0-1 .39 Age (in years) 12.67 0.97 — — 10.75-15.25 .25 Grade 7.22 0.99 — — 6-10 .38 Emotion Socialization EAC Supportive Maternal ES 4.45 0.40 .88 1-5 3.2-5.0 -.59 EAC Unsupportive Maternal ES 2.21 0.48 .90 1-5 1.1-4.2 .59 YYF Supportive Peer ES 3.44 0.54 .92 1-5 1.2-4.8 -.42 YYF Unsupportive Peer ES 1.50 0.37 .90 1-5 1.0-2.6 .37 Social Outcomes SEQ Overt Victimization 1.55 0.65 .74 1-5 1.0-4.3 1.52 SEQ Relational Victimization 1.87 0.76 .84 1-5 1.0-5.0 1.32 SEQ Receipt of Prosocial Behavior 3.80 0.64 .81 1-5 1.8-5.0 -.15 KIMC Bullying Behaviors 1.48 0.56 .84 1-5 1.0-5.0 2.46 FQQ Positive Friendship Quality 3.94 0.61 .86 1-5 2.1-4.9 -.48
Note. The range maximums in Age and Grade reflect one adolescent’s reciprocated friendship with an older adolescent. EAC = Emotions as a Child questionnaire; YYF = You and Your Friends questionnaire; SEQ = Social Experience Questionnaire; KIMC = The Kids in My Class Questionnaire; FQQ = Friendship Quality Questionnaire.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 76
Table 4
Summary of Intercorrelations Between Major Study Variables
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. Gender (0 = female) — 2. Age (in years) .06 — 3. EAC Supportive Maternal ES .03 -.24** — 4. EAC Unsupportive Maternal ES -.05 -.17* -.01 — 5. YYF Supportive Peer ES -.34*** .04 .18* -.03 — 6. YYF Unsupportive Peer ES .25** -.05 -.15t .07 -.46*** — 7. SEQ Overt Victimization .22** -.10 .05 -.20* -.13t .17* — 8. SEQ Relational Victimization .01 -.03 .03 -.09 -.07 .02 .43*** — 9. SEQ Receipt of Prosocial Behavior -.35*** -.14t .02 .11 .19* -.03 -.21** -.29*** — 10. KIMC Bullying Behaviors .30*** .16 -.19* .08 -.22** -.22** .34*** .14t -.21** — 11. FQQ Positive Friendship Quality -.43*** -.02 .26** -.04 .31*** -.17* -.13t .03 .36*** -.36*** — Note. EAC = Emotions as a Child questionnaire; YYF = You and Your Friends questionnaire; SEQ = Social Experience Questionnaire; KIMC = The Kids in My Class Questionnaire; FQQ = Friendship Quality Questionnaire. tp < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 77
Table 5
Indirect Effect of Supportive Maternal Emotion Socialization on Adolescents’ Social Outcomes, through Supportive Peer Emotion Socialization
Adolescent Social Outcome Indirect Effect (ab) Bootstrapped SE Bootstrapped 95% CI Overt Victimization -.04 .03 [-.12, -.001] Relational Victimization -.02 .03 [-.12, .02] Bullying -.05 .03 [-.14, -.004] Positive Friendship Quality .08 .04 [.01, .19] Receipt of Prosocial Behavior .05 .04 [.002, .16] Note. These values were obtained in separate tests of the indirect effect of supportive maternal emotion socialization on adolescent social outcomes, through adolescents’ supportive emotion socialization behaviors. ab = point estimate of the indirect effect. SE = standard error of indirect effect. CI = confidence interval. Effects are considered statistically significant if the CI does not include zero and such rows are bolded.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 78
Table 6
Direct Effect of Supportive Maternal Emotion Socialization on Adolescents’ Social Outcomes
Adolescent Social Outcome Direct Effect (SE) t-value Bootstrapped 95% CI Overt Victimization .12 (.13) 0.88 [-.15, .38] Relational Victimization .08 (.15) 0.50 [-.23, .38] Bullying -.21 (.11) -1.93 [-.43, .005]a Positive Friendship Quality .32 (.12) 2.76 [.09, .55] Receipt of Prosocial Behavior -.02 (.13) -0.12 [-.27, .24] Note. These values were obtained in separate tests of the direct effect of supportive maternal emotion socialization on adolescent social outcomes, while holding supportive peer emotion socialization constant. SE = standard error of direct effect. CI = confidence interval. Effects are considered statistically significant if the CI does not include zero and if the p-value = <.05. Statistically significant rows are bolded. a Supportive maternal emotion socialization was marginally directly associated with adolescent bullying, p = .055.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 79
Table 7
Indirect Effect of Unsupportive Maternal Emotion Socialization on Adolescents’ Social Outcomes, through Unsupportive Peer Emotion Socialization
Adolescent Social Outcome Indirect Effect (ab) Bootstrapped SE Bootstrapped 95% CI Overt Victimization .02 .03 [-.02, .09] Relational Victimization .003 .02 [-.02, .06] Bullying .01 .02 [-.02, .07] Positive Friendship Quality -.01 .02 [-.08, .02] Receipt of Prosocial Behavior -.004 .01 [-.05, .01] Note. These values were obtained in separate tests of the indirect effect of unsupportive maternal emotion socialization on adolescent social outcomes, through adolescents’ unsupportive emotion socialization behaviors. ab = point estimate of the indirect effect. SE = standard error of indirect effect. CI = confidence interval. Effects are considered statistically significant if the CI does not include zero and such rows are bolded.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 80
Table 8
Direct Effect of Unsupportive Maternal Emotion Socialization on Adolescents’ Social Outcomes
Adolescent Social Outcome Direct Effect (SE) t-value Bootstrapped 95% CI Overt Victimization -.28 (.10) -2.69 [-.49, -.07] Relational Victimization -.14 (.13) -1.12 [-.39, .11] Bullying .07 (.09) 0.82 [-.11, .25] Positive Friendship Quality -.03 (.10) -0.31 [-.23, .17] Receipt of Prosocial Behavior .14 (.11) 1.36 [-.07, .35] Note. These values were obtained in separate tests of the direct effect of unsupportive maternal emotion socialization on adolescent social outcomes, while holding supportive peer emotion socialization constant. SE = standard error of direct effect. CI = confidence interval. Effects are considered statistically significant if the CI does not include zero and if the p-value = <.05. Statistically significant rows are bolded.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 81
Peer Emotion Socialization
Maternal Emotion Adolescent Socialization Social Outcomes
Figure 1. Conceptual diagram of the mediation models tested. Specifically, the indirect effect of maternal emotion socialization on adolescent social adjustment, through adolescents’ emotion socialization was tested.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 82
Peer Emotion Socialization
a b
Maternal Emotion Adolescent Socialization Social Outcomes c
Figure 2. Statistical diagram of the mediation models tested. Specifically, the indirect effect (ab) of maternal emotion socialization on adolescent social adjustment, through adolescents’ emotion socialization was tested. Path a quantifies how much two cases that differ by one unit on maternal emotion socialization are estimated to differ on peer emotion socialization. Path b quantifies how much two cases that differ by one unit on peer emotion socialization are estimated to differ on adolescents’ social outcomes. Path c quantifies the direct effect of maternal emotion socialization on adolescents’ social outcomes, holding peer emotion socialization constant.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 83
Supportive Peer Emotion Socialization
Path a = .24 (.11)* Path b = -.18 (.10) t
Supportive Maternal Adolescent Overt Emotion Socialization Victimization Path c = .12 (.13)
Figure 3. Indirect effect of supportive maternal ES on adolescent overt victimization through adolescents’ supportive ES. Unstandardized beta and standard error values are reported here. tp < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 84
Supportive Peer Emotion Socialization
Path a = .24 (.11)* Path b = -.20 (.08)*
Supportive Maternal Adolescent Emotion Socialization t Bullying Behaviors Path c = -.21 (.11)
Figure 4. Indirect and direct effect of supportive maternal ES on adolescent bullying. Unstandardized beta and standard error values are reported here. tp < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 85
Supportive Peer Emotion Socialization
Path a = .24 (.11)* Path b = .31 (.09)***
Supportive Maternal Adolescent Positive Emotion Socialization ** Friendship Quality Path c = .32 (.12)
Figure 5. Indirect and direct effect of supportive maternal ES on adolescent positive friendship quality. Unstandardized beta and standard error values are reported here. tp < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 86
Supportive Peer Emotion Socialization
Path a = .24 (.11)* Path b = .22 (.10)*
Supportive Maternal Adolescent Receipt of Emotion Socialization Prosocial Behavior Path c = -.02 (.13)
Figure 6. Indirect effect of supportive maternal ES on adolescent receipt of prosocial behavior through adolescents’ supportive ES. Unstandardized beta and standard error values are reported here. tp < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 87
Unsupportive Peer Emotion Socialization
Path a = .05 (.06) Path b = .34 (.02)*
Unsupportive Adolescent Overt Maternal Emotion ** Victimization Socialization Path c = -.28 (.10)
Figure 7. Direct effect of unsupportive maternal ES on adolescent overt victimization. Unstandardized beta and standard error values are reported here. tp < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
EMOTION SOCIALIZATION AND ADOLESCENTS’ SOCIAL EXPRIENCES 88
Appendix
1. Adolescent Assent Script
2. Emotions as a Child questionnaire
a. Sadness Responses
b. Anger Responses
c. Worry Responses
3. You and Your Friends questionnaire
a. Sadness Responses
b. Anger Responses
c. Worry Responses
4. Social Experience Questionnaire
5. The Kids in My Class questionnaire
6. Friendship Quality Questionnaire
Adolescent Assent Script
“Thank you for your interest in our project. I am going to tell you a little bit about the project we are doing and ask that you help us out with it.
Your participation in this project is your choice. Even though your parents have given you permission to help us out, you can still choose not to participate. If you decide to participate, you can stop at any time without any consequences.
If you agree to help us out, we will ask you some questions about your feelings and experiences with friends. We will also have you and your friend do a task together that will involve talking to each other about a problem you pick to discuss. We will be asking you these questions and having you do this task so we can learn more about children’s feelings and their friendships. We will read all the directions and questions to you. You will tell us your answers and we will write them down for you. Please answer each question as truthfully as possible. Remember that there are no right or wrong answers. If you do not want to answer a question because it makes you feel uncomfortable, please tell me and you may skip it. Your answers and your friends’ answers to the questions today are personal and private. Please do not talk about your answers with your friend or ask your friend about his or her answers when we are finished. If you have a question or feel confused at any point, feel free to stop and ask.
All of your answers will be private which means that they will not be shared with anyone unless you tell us you are feeling really bad. If you do tell us this, then we will let a parent know so that someone can help you feel better. Your name will not be on your paper, and we will be the only ones to will see your answers.”
Emotions as a Child: Sadness Responses
Think of a time when your child felt SAD or DOWN in the past year. When your child was SAD or feeling DOWN in the past year, how often would you respond in these ways?
Never Not very Sometime Often Very often often s 1. When my child was sad, I 1 2 3 4 5 responded to his/her sadness. 2. When my child was sad, I told 1 2 3 4 5 him/her to stop being sad. 3. When my child was sad, I helped him/her deal with the issue that made 1 2 3 4 5 him/her sad. 4. When my child was sad, I got very 1 2 3 4 5 sad. 5. When my child was sad, I told him/her that he/she was acting 1 2 3 4 5 younger than his/her age. 6. When my child was sad, I asked 1 2 3 4 5 him/her what made him/her sad. 7. When my child was sad, I told 1 2 3 4 5 him/her not to worry. 8. When my child was sad, I 1 2 3 4 5 expressed that I was very sad. 9. When my child was sad, I let him/her know I did not approve of 1 2 3 4 5 his/her sadness. 10. When my child was sad, I gave 1 2 3 4 5 him/her something he/she liked. 11. When my child was sad, I told 1 2 3 4 5 him/her to cheer up. 12. When my child was sad, I took 1 2 3 4 5 time to focus on him/her. 13. When my child was sad, I got 1 2 3 4 5 very upset. 14. When my child was sad, I did not 1 2 3 4 5 pay attention to his/her sadness. 15. When my child was sad, I 1 2 3 4 5 comforted him/her.
Emotions as a Child: Anger Responses
Think of a time when your child felt ANGRY or FRUSTRATED. When your child was ANGRY or feeling FRUSTRATED, how often would you respond in these ways?
Never Not very Sometime Often Very often often s 1. When my child was angry, I 1 2 3 4 5 responded to his/her anger. 2. When my child was angry, I told 1 2 3 4 5 him/her to stop being angry. 3. When my child was angry, I helped him/her deal with the issue that made 1 2 3 4 5 him/her angry. 4. When my child was angry, I got 1 2 3 4 5 very angry. 5. When my child was angry, I told him/her that he/she was acting 1 2 3 4 5 younger than his/her age. 6. When my child was angry, I asked 1 2 3 4 5 him/her what made him/her angry. 7. When my child was angry, I told 1 2 3 4 5 him/her not to worry. 8. When my child was angry, I 1 2 3 4 5 expressed that I was very angry. 9. When my child was angry, I let him/her know I did not approve of 1 2 3 4 5 his/her anger. 10. When my child was angry, I gave 1 2 3 4 5 him/her something he/she liked. 11. When my child was angry, I told 1 2 3 4 5 him/her to cheer up. 12. When my child was angry, I took 1 2 3 4 5 time to focus on him/her. 13. When my child was angry, I got 1 2 3 4 5 very upset. 14. When my child was angry, I did 1 2 3 4 5 not pay attention to his/her anger. 15. When my child was angry, I 1 2 3 4 5 comforted him/her.
Emotions as a Child: Worry Responses
Think of a time when your child felt WORRIED or AFRAID. When your child was WORRIED or feeling AFRAID, how often would you respond in these ways?
Never Not very Sometime Often Very often often s 1. When my child was worried, I 1 2 3 4 5 responded to his/her worry. 2. When my child was worried, I told 1 2 3 4 5 him/her to stop being worried. 3. When my child was worried, I helped him/her deal with the issue 1 2 3 4 5 that made him/her worried. 4. When my child was worried, I got 1 2 3 4 5 very worried. 5. When my child was worried, I told him/her that he/she was acting 1 2 3 4 5 younger than his/her age. 6. When my child was worried, I asked him/her what made him/her 1 2 3 4 5 worried. 7. When my child was worried, I told 1 2 3 4 5 him/her not to worry. 8. When my child was worried, I 1 2 3 4 5 expressed that I was very worried. 9. When my child was worried, I let him/her know I did not approve of 1 2 3 4 5 his/her worry. 10. When my child was worried, I 1 2 3 4 5 gave him/her something he/she liked. 11. When my child was worried, I 1 2 3 4 5 told him/her to cheer up. 12. When my child was worried, I 1 2 3 4 5 took time to focus on him/her. 13. When my child was worried, I got 1 2 3 4 5 very upset. 14. When my child was worried, I did 1 2 3 4 5 not pay attention to his/her worry. 15. When my child was worried, I 1 2 3 4 5 comforted him/her.
You and Your Friends: Sadness Responses
You got some very bad and upsetting news today that has made you sad. You are with your friend and you’re thinking about this news, and you are feeling really, really sad. Think about what your friend would do in this situation if he KNEW that you really felt sad. Rate how likely he would be to do each of the things on the list. Do you think HE:
Definitely would Would do this about HALF Definitely not do this the time WOULD do this 1 2 3 4 5
1.) ______Try to get you to do something else, to take your mind off feeling sad. 2.) ______Push you away or hit you. 3.) ______Not say or do anything about it. 4.) ______Say that they’ll stop liking you if you don’t change your attitude. 5.) ______Get sad too. 6.) ______Help you to deal with what’s made you feel sad. 7.) ______Act like he/she doesn’t notice that you feel sad. 8.) ______Say something like “You’re being ridiculous,” or “You’re stupid.” 9.) ______Say something like “Cheer up!” 10.) ______Leave you out of the group or any activities for a while. 11.) ______Say that he/she doesn’t like it when you act this way. 12.) ______Get upset at what’s going on. 13.) ______Say something like “It’s okay, we all feel sad sometimes.” 14.) ______Ignore the fact that you feel sad. 15.) ______Tell other people secrets or mean things about you. 16.) ______Tell you that things aren’t so bad. 17.) ______Tell you that you have a good reason to feel really sad. 18.) ______Ask you about what has made you feel sad
You and Your Friends: Anger Responses
You just found out about something really unfair and annoying that was done to you, and that has made you angry. You are with your friend and you feel really, really angry. Think about what your friend would do in this situation if he/she KNEW that you really felt angry. Rate how likely he/she would be to do each of the things on the list. Do you think HE/SHE:
Definitely would Would do this about HALF Definitely not do this the time WOULD do this 1 2 3 4 5
1.) ______Say something like “Cheer up!” 2.) ______Say something like “You’re being ridiculous,” or “You’re stupid.” 3.) ______Act like he/she doesn’t notice that you feel angry. 4.) ______Help you to deal with what’s made you feel angry. 5.) ______Get angry too. 6.) ______Say that they’ll stop liking you if you don’t change your attitude. 7.) ______Not say or do anything about it. 8.) ______Push you away or hit you. 9.) ______Try to get you to do something else, to take your mind off feeling angry. 10.) ______Ask you about what has made you feel angry. 11.) ______Tell you that you have a good reason to feel really angry. 12.) ______Tell you that things aren’t so bad. 13.) ______Tell other people secrets or mean things about you. 14.) ______Ignore the fact that you feel angry. 15.) ______Say something like “It’s okay, we all feel angry sometimes.” 16.) ______Get upset at what’s going on. 17.) ______Say that he/she doesn’t like it when you act this way. 18.) ______Leave you out of the group or any activities for a while.
You and Your Friends: Worry Responses
You discover that something bad and harmful might be about to happen to you. This has really made you worried. You’re with your friend and you are feeling really, really worried. Think about what your friend would do in this situation if she KNEW that you really felt worried. Rate how likely she would be to do each of the things on the list. Do you think SHE:
Definitely would Would do this about HALF Definitely not do this the time WOULD do this 1 2 3 4 5
1.) ______Get worried too. 2.) ______Say that they’ll stop liking you if you don’t change your attitude. 3.) ______Not say or do anything about it. 4.) ______Push you away or hit you. 5.) ______Try to get you to do something else, to take your mind off feeling worried. 6.) ______Ignore the fact that you feel worried. 7.) ______Say something like “It’s okay, we all feel worried sometimes.” 8.) ______Get upset at what’s going on. 9.) ______Say that he/she doesn’t like it when you act this way. 10.) ______Leave you out of the group or any activities for a while. 11.) ______Say something like “Cheer up!” 12.) ______Say something like “You’re being ridiculous,” or “You’re stupid.” 13.) ______Act like he/she doesn’t notice that you feel worried 14.) ______Help you to deal with what’s made you feel worried. 15.) ______Ask you about what has made you feel worried. 16.) ______Tell you that you have a good reason to feel really worried. 17.) ______Tell you that things aren’t so bad. 18.) ______Tell other people secrets or mean things about you.
Social Experience Questionnaire
Almost Almost Some- All the Never all the Never times time time 1. How often do you get pushed or shoved? 1 2 3 4 5 2. How often does a kid try to keep others from liking you by saying mean 1 2 3 4 5 things about you? 3. How often does a kid tell you that they won’t like you unless you do 1 2 3 4 5 what the kid says? 4. How often do you get help from another kid when you need it? 1 2 3 4 5 5. How often does another kid let you know that they care about you? 1 2 3 4 5 6. How often when a kid is mad at you, do they get back at you by not letting 1 2 3 4 5 you be in their group anymore? 7. How often do you get cheered up by another kid when you are sad or 1 2 3 4 5 upset? 8. How often are you kicked or have your hair pulled? 1 2 3 4 5 9. How often do you have lies told about you to make other kids not like you 1 2 3 4 5 anymore? 10. How often do you get hit? 1 2 3 4 5 11. How often does another kid do something that makes you feel happy? 1 2 3 4 5
12. How often does another kid say something nice to you? 1 2 3 4 5 13. How often are you left out on purpose when it’s time to do an activity? 1 2 3 4 5
The Kids in My Class questionnaire
Hardly Most of the Do you: Never Sometimes Always ever time 1. Pick on other kids in your class at 1 2 3 4 5 school? 2. Say mean things to other kids in your 1 2 3 4 5 class at school? 3. Say bad things about other kids in 1 2 3 4 5 your class at school? 4. Hit other kids in your class at 1 2 3 4 5 school?
Friendship Quality Questionnaire
1. ______makes me feel good about my ideas.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
2. ______and I make up easily when we have a fight.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
3. ______and I argue a lot.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
4. ______helps me so I can get done quicker.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
5. ______and I always sit together at lunch.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
6. ______and I always tell each other our problems.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
7. ______tells me I am good at things.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
8. ______and I get over our arguments really quickly.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
9. ______and I fight a lot.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
10. ______and I help each other with school work a lot.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
11. ______and I always pick each other as partners for things.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
12. ______and I talk about the things that make us sad.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
13. ______and I make each other feel important and special.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
14. ______and I talk about how to get over being mad at each other.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
15. ______and I get mad a lot.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
16. ______and I give advice when figuring things out.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
17. ______and I always play together at recess/during breaks.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true
18. I talk to ______when I’m mad about something that happened to me.
1 2 3 4 5 not at all true a little true somewhat true pretty true really true